An Australian school found a rare, huge moth with wings that were 10 inches across.
People almost never see this huge moth, but it was recently found on a school building site in Australia. The huge bug is so heavy that it can’t move, and it doesn’t reach its full size until a few days before it mates. After that, it dies.
The biggest moth species in the world is the giant wood moth (Endoxyla cinereus). The Australian Museum says that fully grown females can weigh up to 1 ounce (30 grams) and have wingspans of 10 inches (25 centimeters). They are about twice as big as males. In Australia and New Zealand, you can find them in woods.
Building crews at Mount Cotton State School found the female giant wood moth on the site of a new school building near the edge of a jungle. After taking pictures of the moth, the workers let it go back into the wild.
In a school statement, director Meagan Steward called it “an amazing find,” but she also said that “they were not surprised” because the school often has visitors from animals like wallabies, koalas, ducks, snakes, tree frogs, possums, and turtles.
The young stages of these huge bugs, which are generally called witchetty grubs, dig holes in eucalyptus trees and then come out as caterpillars that use silky threads to get to the ground and eat the tree’s roots. The Australian Museum says that the worms then go through a beautiful change and come out as their huge final form.
The younger males can fly short distances to find females on the ground to mate with after they hatch. The female will lay about 20,000 small eggs, which will hatch into witchetty grubs if breeding goes well. The Australian Museum says that people don’t often see the huge moths because they die so quickly after the energy-intensive reproduction process.
Children could not see the huge bug up close because the school was closed when it was found. The school said that pictures of the moth led to a creative writing session where they wrote a story about a “giant moth invasion” in which their teacher, “Mrs. Wilson,” was eaten.
