Yesterday Mike and I had one of the Cecropia cages open, taking pictures of one of the moths, when another moth started emerging! I’d never seen one emerge before – they do it very quickly – it took less than a minute. I took pictures of it, and thought I would post the whole sequence.
They’re blurry because the moth was moving all the time – and because I was trying to watch and take pictures at the same time. You can see how hard he had to work to squeeze himself out of that small opening in the cocoon.
Here he is just at the beginning – when we first noticed him.
It took him 5 minutes or so to pump up his wings, and then he looked like this.
Here’s a neat 18 second video Mike took of the moth pumping up his wings. Don’t try this unless you have a fast internet connection – it’s pretty big.