2023-08-29 19:35:00
Some moths turn the day into night by living in dark caves. The brown house moth is one such. That is a different species than the clothes moth that causes the sudden holes in your beloved shirt. Even though the house moth sometimes kills textiles.
Basically it is a beautiful creature, with cream marbled front and light gray hind wings. But it only shows it when it flies and when it does, you’ll see it’s dark. In daylight it runs away with folded wings. That makes a tense impression, as if the little insect is up to something.
I came across a few when I was passing my shell collection through my hands. I had already done that two years ago, then in view of the book of shells I was writing. Now my goal was sanitation. The bulk of collector’s items like whelks and huge ancient oysters are going away; whoever wants one, come by. Otherwise they end up on the shell path.
Anyway, during the cleanup, house moths turned out to be useful helpers with the non-shells. Most of the fossils, skulls and feathers I have long since given away or thrown away. But it turned out there was still a lot to eat. The first moth to escape from a box had wreaked havoc in… yes, in what? There was only gray powder left. The animal had been locked up for two years in a box that looked sealed. Can such an animal go without air for so long? House moths can survive tough times in a kind of hibernation, but this one had eaten a lot as a caterpillar and reacted alertly as a moth. He ran away and hid in a crab shell, see photo.
Furthermore, the fur of a monkey bread (from the monkey bread tree), a pair of long-eared owl balls and a hermit crab had to die. All pulverized. The moths were still busy with the musk ox wool from Greenland.
Everything in the organic waste bin. I just wonder what those house moths have to live on now.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes regarding something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
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#Moths #musk #oxwool #Fidelity
