Ailanthus silkmoth
The ailanthus silkmoth is a huge moth, with wings as wide as a grown-up's hand. Its brown wings have white and yellow stripes, a little half-moon spot on each wing and eye spots near the tips. Its caterpillars spin silk that people can use to make cloth.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillars grow up to 7.5 centimetres long. They are whitish green with little white bumps along their back.
The young caterpillars stay together in a group, but the older ones live alone.
Its cocoon has a little escape hatch, so the moth can climb out easily.
One kind of it in India makes eri silk. Its silk is very strong, but it is spun like wool instead of being unwound from the cocoon.
Apart from the silkworm, its silkworm is the only one that is completely tame and raised by people.
Most asked questions about Ailanthus silkmoth
?How big is the ailanthus silkmoth?
Its wings are about 11 to 12.5 centimetres from tip to tip.
?What does the ailanthus silkmoth eat?
The grown-up moth cannot eat at all. The caterpillars eat leaves, mostly from the tree of heaven.
?Is the ailanthus silkmoth dangerous?
No. It is completely harmless.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Samia cynthia
- Named by
- Drury, 1773
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Saturniidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Saturniidae
- Lives on
- Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania, Africa
- Also known as
- Eri silkmoth
Where the facts come from
- Samia cynthia (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by No machine-readable author provided. Kugamazog~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims).. CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same 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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