When I was a kid I was not such a big fan of winged insects. I liked butterflies, and bees were cute (if not slightly terrifying), but moths were another matter. They almost seemed a bit sinister, these drab brown-spotted, ugly-duckling cousins to the more showy butterflies, hovering near the lightbulb over our front porch or found, immovable, clinging to the siding as if they would leap off on me at any moment. Of course, I still don't care for things like mosquitoes or flies or wasps, but I do have a greater appreciation for the more fuzzy, somewhat overlooked member of the Lepidoptera family: the moth.
I am struck by just how diverse moths are. I swear the only moths I saw growing up were of the drab variety, but do a little search online and you can find all manner of colors, patterns, shapes and sizes. In fact, there are more than 11,000 species of moths in the U.S. alone, vastly outnumbering butterfly species 10 to 1! Varieties of moths found around the world can be as small as the tip of a pencil or as large as a one foot wingspan.
Moths are one of the world's great mimics. Some have adapted to look like other more harmful insects, like a wasp or a bee or a tarantula. I have learned that they do a lot of really good things, too, like pollinating plants with their hairy bodies and legs. Yea, pollination!
Most importantly, since there are far more moth species in the U.S. than birds (914 bird species to be exact), they provide a very abundant food source for bats, birds and other animals, including people in some parts of the world. While my appreciation of them has evolved since I was a kid, I am not sure that I will ever get to the point where I will add them to my diet. I will just marvel at them from afar.
So let's just admire their beautiful variety and consider how we can be inspired by them...the colors, the patterns, the shapes. You can use the inspiration below, or feel free to find your own moth inspiration!
See you on August 18th!
