Scarce merveille du jour
Moma alpium
Name means: “wonder of the day, in French”
The scarce merveille du jour is a moth with blue-green wings marked with black and white. It looks a bit like a piece of mossy bark. Its caterpillar is just as fancy, with tufts of hair on little red bumps.
Lives in
Europe and Asia, as far as Korea and Japan, in woods
Wingspan
3 to 3.5 cm (1.2 to 1.4 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Its caterpillars eat the leaves of oak, beech and birch trees.
How big is it?
How wide are its wings?
🍚wings as wide as 6 grains of rice in a row⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 29 seconds
How big is Scarce merveille du jour compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Scarce merveille du jour about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
The caterpillar is pale brown with yellow streaks, and its back is black with three whitish patches.
2
Moths from Korea are smaller than the ones from Japan and Europe.
3
It flies from May to September, depending on where it lives.
you asked
Most asked questions about Scarce merveille du jour
?What does the scarce merveille du jour eat?
Its caterpillars eat oak, beech and birch leaves.
?How big is the scarce merveille du jour?
With open wings it is about 3 to 3.5 centimetres wide.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Moma alpium
- Named by
- Osbeck, 1778
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Noctuidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Noctuidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Moma alpium (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 Donald Hobern. CC BY 2.0, 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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