Luna Moth Print
Luna Moth Print
Size
12 × 18 in overall, unframed. The plate sits on an ivory sheet with a border of about an inch, so it fits a standard ready-made frame of the same size, with or without a mat.
Printed on 189 g/m² (10.3 mil) enhanced matte paper.
Want it ready to hang? The same plate comes framed in Black or Red Oak.
A male, his caterpillar and cocoon on sweetgum, from the first illustrated book of American insects.
The print
- The full plate with its name, legend and credits, re-rendered from the source scan at print size, not enlarged from a shirt file.
- Restored from a library scan of the original book; nothing redrawn.
- Keep out of direct sunlight; a frame with glass or acrylic keeps it clean.
Shipping & production
Each print is printed for you after you order, usually within 2–5 business days, and ships on its own (separate from any shirts or framed prints in the same order). Shipping is shown at checkout before you pay.
Returns
If your print arrives damaged or misprinted, contact us within 30 days of delivery with a photo and we'll send a replacement or a refund. Because every print is made to order, we can't accept returns for a change of mind.
Plate 005
From the book
- Species
- Actias luna
- As named in the book
- Phalaena Luna. Green Swallow-tailed Emperor Moth.
- Artist
- John Abbot
- Book
- The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia, tab. XLVIII, 1797
“The food of this species is the Sweet Gum, different kinds of Walnut, and the Persimmon.”
Then and now
The adult has no working mouth and lives about a week.
Field notes
The adult never eats, and its tails fool hunting bats.
The luna moth spends nearly its whole life as something else: an egg, a green caterpillar chewing sweetgum or walnut leaves, a pupa in a papery cocoon. When the adult finally emerges, it has about a week left. Its mouthparts are vestigial, so it can't eat. It lives on what the caterpillar stored, flies by night, finds a mate, and is gone.
Abbot painted a male: note the broad, feathery antennae he uses to smell out a female. Above a sprig of sweetgum, with the caterpillar and cocoon below.
Those long tails turned out to be more than decoration. In 2015, researchers filmed bats hunting luna moths and found the moths spin their tails in flight, scattering the bat's sonar. Bats aimed at the tails in more than half their attacks and came away with a scrap of wing instead of a meal.