Cinnabar Moth - Tumblr Posts

Moth of the Week

Cinnabar Moth

Tyria jacobaeae

The cinnabar moth is part of the Erebidae family, one of the largest moth families. It is named after the mineral cinnabar, which is a similar bright red to the moth’s red & black wings. This species was first described in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus and can be seen flying during the day and night.

Description Cinnabar moths usually have black forewings with red patterns and red hindwings with a black border. However on rare occasions, the red is replaced with yellow, or the forewings are red with a black border or fully black. These colors tell potential predators that the cinnabar moth is unpalatable, or has a unpleasant bitter taste.

Average wingspan of 37 mm (≈1.5 in)

Diet and Habitat These moths are native to Europe, eastern and central Asia, Siberia, and China. This species feeds on plants in the Senecio genus, especially ragwort. This plant is the reason why cinnabar moths do not taste good to predators since the caterpillars absorb bitter substances from the ragwort’s leaves. This plant is also why the cinnabar moth was brought to New Zealand, Australia, and North America since ragwort is an invasive plant species.

Mating Mating season for cinnabar moths is in early August. Female moths can lay up to 300 eggs on the underside of ragwort leaves in batches of 30 to 60 eggs.

Predators Most predators avoid cinnabar moths and larvae, except for various species of the cuckoo bird. Cinnabar moths have few predators because are a bright red, signaling to predators that they are unpalatable, or have a unpleasant bitter taste.

Fun Fact (CW: cannibalism) If and when the cinnabar caterpillars run out of leaves to eat on the ragwort plant, they will turn to cannibalism and eat each other for survival.

(Source: Wikipedia, Buglife)

Day 3- Pumpkin patch and Day 4- Delicious

Hope you can forgive the misspelling, I didn't want to be even more behind on these so here it is, I figured if I miss a day then I'll combine the prompts. So, here's presenting two of my moth girlies, black and red over there is still getting her look updated but I wanted to draw them, I might do a bigger and better version of this later.

Cool little cinnabar moth catapilar i found in the garden! i almost let my food burn bc of it