Bug card No. 2892 of 4,939

Modest sphinx

Pachysphinx modesta

Eats: Plants MothsForests and woods6 legs

The modest sphinx is a big, plump hawk moth. It flies at night in early summer. Its caterpillar grows up on poplar and willow trees.

Lives in

From the southern United States up through Canada

Top speed

about 45 km/h (28 mph)

Can it hurt you?

Harmless

Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.

What does it eat?

The caterpillar eats the leaves of poplar, willow and cottonwood trees.

A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)

A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)

Modest sphinx about 45 km/h (28 mph)

A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

In Canada the grown-up moths fly from the middle of June to the middle of July.

In the north there is one family of moths each year. Further south there can be two.

It belongs to the hawk moths, a family of strong, fast-flying moths.

you asked

?What does the modest sphinx caterpillar eat?

Leaves of poplar, willow and cottonwood trees.

?Where does the modest sphinx live?

In North America, from the southern United States all the way through Canada.

Pachysphinx modesta (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 (c) Laura Gaudette, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

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