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Sticker of Promethea silkmoth
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Promethea silkmoth

Callosamia promethea
Eats: Nothing as a grown-upMothsForests and woods6 legs

The promethea silkmoth is a big, pretty moth with eyespots on its wings. The boys are dark and the girls are brighter, rusty red and cream. It spins a silk cocoon and hides it inside a rolled-up dead leaf on a tree.

Lives in
Eastern United States, from the east coast to the Great Plains, in leafy forests
Wingspan
7.6 to 10 cm (3 to 4 in)
Top speed
about 22 km/h (14 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
The grown-up moth does not eat at all. The caterpillar eats tree leaves, like those of the tulip tree, sassafras and spicebush.
For real!Photo of Promethea silkmoth
Picture by Jomegat. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Promethea silkmoth wings about 10 cm tip to tip (4 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
wings as wide as your handcould fly across a whole football pitch in 17 seconds

How big is Promethea silkmoth compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is the only moth in its family where the boys fly in the daytime and the girls fly at night. They only meet for a few hours in the early evening.

2

The dark male looks like a poisonous butterfly, the pipevine swallowtail. Birds think it tastes bad and leave it alone.

3

The caterpillar starts out yellow with black stripes, then turns blue green and grows four red bumps and one yellow bump.

4

Its cocoon hangs on thin branches all winter. Mice are too heavy to climb out there, and woodpeckers find it hard to open.

you asked

Most asked questions about Promethea silkmoth

?What does the promethea silkmoth eat?

The adult moth does not eat at all. Only the caterpillar eats, munching tree leaves.

?How big is the promethea silkmoth?

Its wings are about 7.5 to 10 centimetres across. The females are a bit bigger than the males.

?Is the promethea silkmoth harmful?

No. It does not hurt people and does not damage the trees it lives on.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Callosamia promethea
Named by
Drury, 1773
Group
Moths
Family
Saturniidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Saturniidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Spicebush silkmoth

Where the facts come from

  1. Callosamia promethea (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Jomegat. 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.

More from the same group: Moths

Also at home here: Forests and woods