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Butterfly Garden

World's most beautiful insect?

KC Clark - Zone 2012-6a OH

12 years ago

I was looking through a book someone gave me called "The Handy Bug Answer Book" (looking to see if it defined "cocoon" but it does not). One question that is "answered" is about the world's most beautiful insect. The book says Chyrsiridia madagascariensis and also says to see the color insert for a picture. Well, my book has no color inserts (I'm guessing the hard cover edition did) so I looked it up on the internet. Pretty amazing moth. At first I thought the different looks were male/female differences. But a little more reading taught me it was just dorsal versus ventral views.

First pic is semi dial-up friendly (328k). The other 3 pics are not.

http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/media/Uranie_de_Madagascar/11020109

http://dic.academic.ru/pictures/wiki/files/67/Chrysiridia_rhipheus_verso.JPG

http://dic.academic.ru/pictures/wiki/files/67/Chrysiridia_rhipheus_23.JPG

http://gbphotodidactical.com/images/butterfly-Chrysiridia-Madagascariensis-2-%28M%29-fs-C-name.jpg

On a totally different note; the book mentions a Southeast Asia moth that pierces the skin and sucks blood from mammals, even elephants. This book was released in '99. A Google search on "blood sucking moth" shows me that some other vampire moths have been discovered since '99.

You have never seen it all.

KC

Comments (3)

MissSherry
12 years ago
I'm not surprised it's a Urania moth, KC - I agree that they're the most beautiful of all insects.

Here's a link from a few years ago about a Urania moth that occasionally visits south Texas.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: Urania Moth
KC Clark - Zone 2012-6a OH
Original Author
12 years ago
I'd never expect to find something like that flying around the US.

Why did you switch from "MissSherry" to "misssherry?" Faster to type?
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larry_gene
12 years ago
I think GardenWeb automatically converts all username characters to lower case. That way, if you do a search for someone's postings, they will be found more easily.

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?what to do with this little guy?

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