Found this while working today. Never saw something like this before.
Beautiful Find
- Thread starter Ratmosphere
- Start date
Shade of Eclipse
Fresh Imago
That's a moth in the family Arctiidae. Most likely Utetheisa ornatrix.
Amazing. It looked like somebody painted a design on it. Nature is beautiful.
The really interesting thing about this moth is that it's native to the American tropics, but spread up here to the northern us on its own after the introduction of ailanthus. Being a tropical species, no part of its life cycle is capable of surviving the winter here- it has to migrate north every summer in a songbird- like fashion.