Spend a moment in our Butterfly Rainforest with Ryan talking about the Atlas moth, Attacus atlas, the world’s largest moth by surface area. This nocturnal species is native to Southeast Asia. They have no mouths and don’t eat or drink in this life stage.
You’ll see these enormous moths here in our Rearing Lab or in the Rainforest exhibit sitting calmly among the foliage. It takes a lot of energy for them to fly and they use that carefully.
Transcript
Hello, welcome back to the Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History. My name is Ryan and today we’re going to do the world’s largest Lepidoptera. And that refers to the Atlas moth, or Attacus atlas of Southeast Asia. Now by largest, I mean by surface area. It doesn’t actually have the widest wingspan the female can get up to a foot long and though that is very impressive, the White Witch of South America gets a couple of centimeters longer. But this is a male, which actually means he’s going be on the smaller side. Like I said, the females can be up to a foot long.
Like most moths, he is nocturnal. He will fly at night to try to find a mate and that’s ultimately all he’s trying to do, because Mr. Atlas moth here doesn’t have a mouth. He can’t eat. He can’t drink. He can’t ingest any type of sustenance whatsoever. And… …but he can fly away off your hand like that. Luckily we have other ones. It is why they have very large antennae here so that they can smell potential mates. The wider surface area allows them to have a stronger sense of smell. And if you’re curious what was just excreted out there that is meconium. Since this is a freshly emerged moth, he’s still got a little extra to excrete from emerging. You see they can be a little lethargic when they first wake up. But I’m gonna go ahead and leave it there.
Again, I hope you all have a healthy and happy rest of the day. Thank you for joining me and have a great rest of the day. Thank you.
About the Butterfly Rainforest exhibit
Support the exhibitVideo by Ryan Fessenden; Produced by Radha Krueger