{"id":5985,"date":"2012-07-22T07:58:56","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T14:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=5985"},"modified":"2012-07-22T08:07:40","modified_gmt":"2012-07-22T15:07:40","slug":"one-big-moth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=5985","title":{"rendered":"one BIG moth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When a moth is named for a mythical giant, one has to suspect that it will be large. Indeed, the Polyphemus Moth is the largest moth in British Columbia, and one of our largest insects of any kind.<\/p>\n<p>Polyphemus, the\u00a0gigantic\u00a0cyclops, lived on an\u00a0Aegean\u00a0island and ate humans&#8212;two for breakfast, Homer tells us.<\/p>\n<p>Polyphemus, the\u00a0gigantic\u00a0moth, lives in southern BC forests (and elsewhere) and eats nothing&#8212;yes, nothing, the adult&#8217;s mouth is vestigial, and this results in a rather short lifespan.<\/p>\n<p>The only function of the adult male Polyphemus Moth (<em>Antheraea polyphemus)<\/em> is to find females and mate. The finding is facilitated by his large feathery antenna; they are scent detectors tuned to the female&#8217;s pheromones.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5988\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/polyphemusmoth120720bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Polyphemus Moths have a wing span of 9 to 14 cm; this one spanned about 12 cm. It did not stay on the spruce branch for long, but soon flew off on its quest.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5989\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/polyphemusmoth120720as.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; When a moth is named for a mythical giant, one has to suspect that it will be large. Indeed, the Polyphemus Moth is the largest moth in British Columbia, and one of our largest insects of any kind. Polyphemus, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=5985\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5985"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6007,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5985\/revisions\/6007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}