Morgan's sphinx moth
Morgan's sphinx moth is a very big moth with a very, very long tongue. It keeps its tongue rolled up like a garden hose and unrolls it to drink nectar from deep inside flowers. Long before anyone had seen it on Madagascar, a famous scientist guessed that a moth like it had to exist.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Charles Darwin saw an orchid whose nectar sits at the end of a tube 20 to 35 centimetres long, and guessed there must be a moth with a tongue long enough to reach it.
Another scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, guessed it would be a sphinx moth. When the moth from Madagascar was found, it was given the name praedicta, which means predicted.
To drink, it backs away from the flower, unrolls its tongue and then flies forward to slide it in.
On Madagascar, the boy moths can make clicking sounds too high for us to hear, which confuse hungry bats.
It helps baobab trees on Madagascar make seeds by carrying their pollen.
Most asked questions about Morgan's sphinx moth
?Which moth has the longest tongue?
Morgan's sphinx moth has one of the longest. It is long enough to reach nectar at the bottom of orchid tubes up to 35 centimetres long.
?What did Darwin predict about Morgan's sphinx moth?
He saw a Madagascar orchid with an extremely long nectar tube and guessed that a moth with a matching long tongue must exist.
?Where does Morgan's sphinx moth live?
In southern Africa and on the island of Madagascar.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Xanthopan morganii
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Sphingidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Sphingidae
- Lives on
- Africa
Where the facts come from
- Xanthopan (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 Esculapio. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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