Atlas moth

Description:

Saturniidae; Saturniinae; Attacus atlas (Linnaeus, 1758). On July 11th., I posted a spotting of Attacus atlas larvae - https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/15... - In that spotting I expressed my concern that the larvae (fairly high up on mahogany trees) were, from time to time, falling to the ground. So, a day or so later, when the weather was becoming very windy, I climbed up a ladder and "rescued " the two larvae that I could reach. I did this by snipping off the twigs they were sitting on and brought them safely to the ground. I then put them in a home-made cage (used in the past for rearing hawk moths) and supplied them with fresh mahogany leaves. I was unsure of the instar and expected several days of feeding to be required before they would pupate. I was astonished, on the following, morning to see two very robust looking cocoons made from lots of silk wrapping and a few leaves. So, I thought how lucky I was to have "rescued" them just at the right time when no work would be required to look after them. So all I had to do was take a look every morning for any signs which might signal that they were on the point of emerging. Then I would have the chance of some photos for Project Noah and I could leave the cage open to allow them to fly to freedom. The normal pupation period for this species (according to Wikipedia) is about 4 weeks. When 5 weeks had passed and they had not emerged, I concluded that my interfering "rescue" had probably resulted in their death., but I just could not bring myself to throw them into the trash. So, in a kind of act of attrition to alleviate my guilt, I tied them both to a branch on a citrus tree in our back yard (I was not in the right state of mind to climb a ladder up into the mahogany tree). Well, that was three days ago and this morning at around 9:30 am, there to my astonishment were two beautiful Atlas Moths. Both had survived and (albeit rather late) they eclosed simultaneously. As can be seen, they were a male and a female. In this species, the female does not fly away when she emerges. She just clings to the outside of the cocoon and emits pheromones to attract a male partner. In this case, she did not have to wait long and the male had a short trip. I had placed them only a few inches apart on the tree. Someone once said, "All's well that ends well".

Habitat:

The habitat in this case must surely be the stand of mahogany trees in our back yard, despite my introducing these moths to the citrus tree. However, Citrus spp. are on the host plant list of this species.

Notes:

The first picture shows the copulating pair on the left and the empty cocoon of the male on the right. The next four pictures are self-explanatory and the last photo, showing the coitus, is for biology buffs. By the way, after posting this spotting, I continued checking on these moths and at 6:15 pm when it was just becoming dark, they were still joined in copulation. When I checked again at 7:00 pm they were gone.