Moth

Antheraea Polyphemus

Fillyjonk talks about moths:

It's a polyphemus moth. Probably  Antheraea Polyphemus.  They're related to silkworms (I don't know if you can make silk from the cocoons, though, and I don't know that they're destructive in the way Lymantra dispar is (the common name on that contains what some now regard as a slur to the Roma people, so, I don't know if we have a new common name* or not but I can remember it as Lymantra). Of course Lymantra is an invasive in the US and Polyphemus is native here.

(*oh hey yes, you can call it the "spongy moth" which makes me laugh so maybe I use that with my classes now) 

These creatures don't live long; they don't have functional mouthparts (unlike some moths and butterflies that eat nectar); they only live about a week and they exist to mate, lay eggs, and die. Which looking at that with a human bias, that seems kind of sad, but then again: will moths ever write symphonies or novels or draw maps?

The other thing that always weirds me out if I think much about it is the metamorphosis process: lepidopterans dissolve into a puddle of goo, leaving behind "imaginal disks" that direct reorganization of what's left into the adult. 

There's a short essay here (Scientific American) that talks about it, and here are some photos from a natural historian who raises silkmoths and had one that "oopsied" and somehow metamorphosed without a cocoon (so apparently the "puddle of goo" was an overstatement)