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Sticker of Mottled rustic
Bug card No. 2919 of 4,939

Mottled rustic

Caradrina morpheus
Eats: PlantsMothsGardens and meadows6 legs

The mottled rustic is a brown moth with blotchy front wings and shiny white back wings. It lives across Europe and Asia. It came to Canada by accident and now lives there too.

Lives in
From northern Europe across Asia to Siberia and Korea, and now also in Canada
Wingspan
3.2 to 3.8 cm (1.3 to 1.5 in)
Top speed
about 14 km/h (8.7 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It is a moth that cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
The caterpillars eat low plants such as nettles and dandelions.
For real!Photo of Mottled rustic
Picture by Fvlamoen. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Mottled rustic wings about 3.8 cm tip to tip (1.5 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
wings as wide as 6 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 27 seconds

How big is Mottled rustic compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its wings are 32 to 38 millimetres from tip to tip.

2

People brought it to Canada by mistake. Now it lives on both the east and the west coast there.

3

The caterpillar is grey brown or dark brown, with a row of dark marks shaped like arrowheads.

4

There is one family of young each year, and the moths fly from the middle of May to August.

you asked

Most asked questions about Mottled rustic

?What does the mottled rustic eat?

Its caterpillars eat low plants like nettles and dandelions.

?Where does the mottled rustic live?

Across Europe and Asia, and now also in Canada.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Caradrina morpheus
Named by
Hufnagel, 1766
Group
Moths
Family
Noctuidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Noctuidae
Lives on
Europe, Asia, North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Caradrina morpheus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Fvlamoen. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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More from the same group: Moths

Also at home here: Gardens and meadows

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