Hummingbirds and Moths

   Recently our collection has been wrapping up some accessioning of different insect specimens donated by our former Herpetology curators Dr. Vitt and Dr. Caldwell. The insects are from their properties in Oklahoma and a few sites in Arizona, California, Florida and Louisiana. We've been cataloging and accessioning them for a while now, and we're finally about to wrap up the moth and butterfly specimens.

Some of the butterfly and moth diversity we received

    If you look at the center of the picture and slightly to the top, you'll see two unit trays (white boxes with foam on the bottom) with moths that have narrow wings with pointed tips. These moths are part of a group of moths called the Sphinx moths or Hawk moths. The name Sphinx comes from the ability of their caterpillars to rear-up with the front part of their body into an "S" form, which apparently gives the appearance of a Sphinx.  The Hawk part of the name comes from the fact that many of these moths are very stealthy fliers, and their overall body gives the appearance of a hawk in flight. I'm not so sure about how accurate that is, but they are pretty elegant moths.

     If you look at the center of the first picture, you'll see a unit tray with four, clear-winged moths. The slightly bigger ones of these are called Hummingbird Clearwing moths, the smaller ones are Snowberry Clearwing moths. The reason I'm focusing on these guys is that they are often confused with Hummingbirds when people see them fly. They fly with the same rapid-beating wings, and can actually hover when they fly. Check out this video of some other Sphinx moths feeding on nectar in a similar manner to the birds.

    The Clearwing moths even look a little bit like hummingbirds. In the pictures below of the Hummingbird and Snowberry moths, you can see how at the end of the abdomen there are patches of setae (hair) that even look like tail-feathers of birds. I'm not sure whether they're for camouflage to look more like birds or if it actually helps them fly like birds, but its unique for this group of moths.

Snowberry Clearwing. See the patch of setae at the base of the abdomen ("butt") that looks like tail feathers?

     One other neat thing about Sphinx moths is that they have really long proboscises ("tongues") that they can be curled-up state at rest (think of a garden hose roller) and extend to feed on the nectar of flowers. You can see the proboscis in the video above as the long tube sticking out at the front of the head. In the picture below, you can see it rolled up.

Hummingbird Clearwing. The dark, half-circle thing at the front of the head is the bottom of the curled-up proboscis.

      Because Hummingbirds and Hummingbird moths share similar flight abilities, feeding habits, and size, there has been a lot of research comparing the two groups to see how they can fly so rapidly, hover, and survive with such high energy needs despite coming from very different evolutionary lineages. Both groups seem to share the same body size (which is on the larger size for moths) at least, and both expend tremendous amounts of energy to fly by hovering. However, when it comes to which came first in exploiting this method of getting flower nectar, the Hummingbird or the Hummingbird moth, its likely the moth. Insects evolved much earlier than most vertebrates (birds, mammals, etc.) and diversified rapidly along with flowering plants (angiosperms) millions of years before Hummingbirds graced the land.
     So, as usual, when it comes to something as cool as hovered flight, insects always are the first to set the trend!