The Hickory Horned Devil! (Citheronia regalis)

This week we are learning about a special giant silkmoth belonging to the subfamily of royal moths! These ones don't produce silken cocoons which are very uncharacteristic for a silkmoth. Support the show :) -> https://www.patreon.com/user?u=46499107 IG: https://www.instagram.com/insects4fun/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085443614825 Email: Insectsfordummies@gmail.com This week's music artists: HM Surf, PurrpleCat, mell-ø, S N U G, and Sleepermane. Transcript: Welcome to Episode 31 of Insects for Fun! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we’ll be talking about a very cool Giant Silkmoth The regal moth also known as the royal walnut moth or the hickory horned devil is a very large and beautiful moth in my favorite family of moths known as Saturniidae or the Giant Silkmoths. I’ve personally been raising Saturniids for the better half of a decade starting in my Senior Year of High School. If people are interested I might even sell eggs and cocoons for whatever I have at some point in the future, for subscribers of this podcast. Anyway! Today we are looking at only one of these beautiful creatures and one that I personally have never actually seen in real life. This moth is considered common in the southeastern states of the US and has become incredibly rare in states above New Jersey. I think its current range is actually south of Jersey west to Ohio and the edge of the great plains down into Eastern Texas but historically this moth could be found in New England as well. Unlike the other members of the Giant Silkmoth family this moth does not produce any silk! Usually, Saturniidae moths will weave silken cocoons which protect their pupae from outside forces, but this moth along with others in the subfamily Ceratocampinae actually bury into the ground before pupation. This feature makes them and all the other royal moths very difficult to find and tricky to raise. Before I continue I want to share with you a visual description because the regal moth or royal walnut moth, true to the name, is a very stunning creature. The body is red with yellow bands and the wings are grey with red lines going down them. There are also a few yellow ovals in between these red lines as if someone with a paintbrush decided to just dab some contrasting colors. This moth has the largest mass of any other moth above Mexico and has a wingspan of 9.5 to 15.5cm. The females are actually larger in this species which isn’t always the case with moths in this family. Earlier I mentioned how Hickory Horned Devils make pupae in the soil and you might have noticed I use the word Pupae when referring to moths and Chrysalis when talking about butterflies and this is because Moths and Butterflies have separate terms. Pupa and chrysalis mean the same thing, but the reason why Butterfly pupae are always referred to as chrysalids comes from coloration. Moth pupae are almost always a type of brown and look drab in comparison to the usual shiny and metallic butterfly pupae. The word chrysalis actually originates from the word chrysos which means gold and refers to this metallic sheen but we’re getting pretty off-topic so let's take it back (rewind affect). The caterpillar of a Hickory Horned Devil is possibly one of the coolest-looking Giant Silkmoth caterpillars I’ve ever seen and there's a good reason why it got the name Hickory Horned Devil. The final instar of this caterpillar is a bluish-green color with 4 small black spiny appendages on each body segment, except for the tail and the first three segments including the head. Replacing these black spines at the front end are four large red and black-tipped devil like horns that protrude from the two segments directly behind the head of the caterpillar. It almost looks like a rams head but with four horns instead of two. The head and last body segment are both red in color and the thorax section has two large black dots where those large devil horns come out. Its si