Old lady
The old lady is a big, dark moth with dusky brown and blackish wings full of soft patterns. People once thought its wings looked like the shawls that grandmothers wore long ago. It likes damp places with plenty of plants.
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Fun facts
Its wings measure about 5.5 to 6.5 centimetres from tip to tip, which is big for a moth.
You can find it on river banks, floodplains, moors, hedgerows and in woods.
It flies from the middle of June to the middle of September.
There is one family of these moths each year.
Most asked questions about Old lady
?Why is it called the old lady moth?
Its wing pattern was said to look like the shawls worn by old ladies long ago.
?Is the old lady moth harmful?
No. It is a harmless moth that cannot bite or sting.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Mormo maura
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Noctuidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Noctuidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
- Also known as
- Black underwing
Where the facts come from
- Mormo maura (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 Hamon jp. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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