#insect-behavior

#insect-behavior

They sleep through the winter through in what is known as diapause, a bit like insect hibernation. They slow their metabolism right down to minimise energy use. In the wild they chose places like under bark in a pile of leaves, anywhere providing a bit of shelter and away from things that might eat them. Sometimes they might come into houses looking for a safe haven.

Ash-brown tatters lofted on pheromones, gypsy moths flutter among boughs and across the meadow like confetti. Beyond hunger. Only sex drives the males. The females wait folded within crevices in bark. They've lost their mouths. Admirable to be so single-minded. Just days ago, as creepy adolescents they chewed the branches bare, littered the path with skeleton leaf-stalks, tore new craters out of the canopy so the sky fell through: we, too, could strip a forest, strip a continent, but not so lacily.