White-tipped black
Melanchroia chephise
The white-tipped black is a moth with dark black wings that have white tips. It flies in warm places from Florida and Texas down to Paraguay. Its caterpillar is a spanworm, which moves by looping its body.
Lives in
From Florida and Texas south to Paraguay
Wingspan
3.3 cm (1.3 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Its caterpillars eat the leaves of snowbush and leaf-flower plants.
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 White-tipped black 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)
White-tipped black about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Its wings measure about 3.3 centimetres from tip to tip.
2
The moths fly in autumn and early winter, from September to December.
3
Now and then single moths wander far north, as far as Kansas and Illinois.
you asked
Most asked questions about White-tipped black
?What does the white-tipped black eat?
Its caterpillars eat snowbush and leaf-flower plants.
?When can you see the white-tipped black?
From September to December.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Melanchroia chephise
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Geometridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Geometridae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Snowbush spanworm
Where the facts come from
- Melanchroia chephise (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 Clinton & Charles Robertson from Del Rio, Texas & College Station, TX, USA. 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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