#calyptra

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Vampire Moths: these moths have a specialized proboscis that allows them to pierce the skin on pieces of fruit and feed on the juices within, and some of them use the same tactic to feed on human blood

Moths of the genus Calyptra are often described as "vampire moths," thanks to their unusual feeding habits. All of the moths in this genus are obligate fruit-piercers, meaning that they subsist primarily on fruit, using a specialized proboscis to pierce the skin and then extracting the fluids from within, but at least 10 species of Calyptra (out of 18 in total) also use the same technique to feed on the blood of living vertebrates, including humans.

Vampire moths have been known to feed on pigs, antelope, water buffalo, deer, cattle, elephants, and humans, among other things. In order to feed, the moth must press its proboscis against the host animal's skin and then oscillate its head back and forth until it is able to pierce through the surface.

Then, as this article explains:

As blood from the host animal wells up, it opens hooks on the sides of the proboscis to anchor it firmly. The proboscis has two parts that alternate between anchoring and drilling through host tissue using an “antiparalell” movement. A bite from a Calyptra moth is red and sore, but is believed to pose no danger to human beings. A vampire moth can suck blood for up to 50 minutes. 

Above: this photo shows the tip of a vampire moth's proboscis, which is equipped with hooks that assist in piercing the skin of both ripened fruit and living mammals

Calyptra is a widely distributed genus that can be found on most continents, but blood-feeding only seems to occur in Calyptra populations that inhabit certain parts of Southeast Asia and Northern or Eastern Russia.

Some species have been known to feed on blood only when they're in certain parts of their geographical range, and then feed only on fruit throughout the rest of their habitat. It's widely speculated that differences in elevation, precipitation, and/or other macroclimate conditions may have an effect on those habits.

Blood-feeding seems to be practiced only by the adult males. The biological purpose of this behavior is unclear, but many scientists believe that it may allow the males to supplement their sodium intake as they prepare to transfer nutrients to the female during reproduction, which is a common practice among insects.

Calyptra moths are also excellent leaf mimics; their wing-pattern, color, and resting position all strongly resemble the appearance of a dry, curled-up leaf, which allows them to blend in with their environment.

Note: this is an edited/updated version of a post that I originally published over two years ago; I rewrote most of the original post, swapped out the photos for higher quality images, and added a few more sources

Sources & More Info:

Acts & Facts: Rogue Moths Didn't Start Out that Way

Purdue University: Investigations of the Vampire Moth Genus Calyptra (PDF)

Medical and Veterinary Entomology: Wound-Feeding and Skin-Piercing Moths, p.452 (PDF)

Entomological Society of America: Geographic Distribution and Differential Feeding Behaviors of the Fruit-Piercing and Skin-Piercing Moth, Calyptra thalictri

Entomology Today: Vampire Moths Suck the Blood of Vertebrates, Including Humans

Nikon Small World: Photo of Calyptra thalictri Proboscis

The Daily Garden: Vampire Moths

[bogcreacher]

bugs rule!!!

[coolbugs]

Bug of the Day

I think I'm in love ❤️❤️❤️

[beeteal]

hey! i wanna get better!

[adhdstoryteller]

This game has be my the throat. Ending after ending. I achieved this one is just under twelve hours. The Sun, The Chancel, Calyptra, Ys, the Seven Coils, it's like a fucking DEMON man

Also Al-Adim is the best visitor because Rose is the best principle and also he talks in a hot way.

I might have a problem

[marshmallowcat666]

Smaugust prompts list by pencil cat!

Smaugust days 1-5;

Day 1 From a Book, Glory from Wings of Fire sitting in the branches of a tree

Day 2 Teeth, an oc named Bumblebee bearing sharp teeth

Day 3 Magic, two wof ocs, Blacknose enchanting his daughter Calyptra’s necklace

Day 4 Sword, wof oc King holding a decorated sword

Day 5 Snooze, wof oc Baltic taking a nap on the sea floor

[quadrant-polls]

caltraps x calyptra from @ungodly-thespian

[cassowariess]

what is your favourite bug?

God, that's a tough one because I love so many. I can definitely say my favourite group of bugs is moths. I even once had a job where I was the curatorial assistant of Lepidoptera at a museum for 2 years.

As for an individual bug...very hard to say, but I do love the Vampire Moth because it looks like he's wearing a little leafy cape:

Note I can't say for sure this is my favourite bug. I could probably name 100 bugs that are my favourite, but I chose this guy because he popped into my head first <3

[ilium-ilia]

calyptra thalictri

simon "ghost" riley x fem!reader | masterlist

sow

tw: drugging, non/dub-con, somno, implied breeding

He comes to you in dreams with heady breath that bleeds through black cloth to brush against your face like a lover's kiss.

But he is no lover, nor man.

Only monster—you call him Ghost.

Ghost arrives when you're in the slick, airy stage between slumber and consciousness, where everything shines too bright and yet is shrouded in a numbra so thick you swear it will choke you. Nothing but tendrils to morph and dance in your vision as you look up at the wide mass before you.

Each time he visits, he wears a mask. Black, with a chalky skull outline along his nose and where his mouth should be—only his eyes are visible. Pools of water darker than the lowest depths of the ocean, ready to drown you. Ready to feel the way your pulse quickens when held beneath the waves that have consumed him long ago.

He never speaks. Not to you—only to himself in deep growls that your fuzzy brain can scarcely make sense of. When he first came to you all those months ago, he stood at the edge of your bed—foreboding, looming taller than any beast you've ever seen or have yet to see since. You were only able to keep your brain awake long enough to make out the way his jaw dances beneath his mask to murmur the word perfect.

You think nothing of it until you start to wake up sore. It's more than odd bruises along your hips that sting when you poke them—it's the pounding in your head when you rouse, and the swelling of your cunt. Your lip is torn; split down the center. A curious tongue pokes at the blood that oozes from the crack, and it tastes suspiciously like love.

The next time he appears, he is on top of you. Hips pinning yours to the bed, hands on either side of your head, your body jostles. Every shockwave ripples through your body, shaking the fatty tissue along your thighs and stomach—you feel each thrust in your throat.

You groan, and he shushes you.

"Soon," he hisses. Your eyes roll into the back of your head, darkness consuming your vision, but not your hearing. "It'll take soon."

Countless nights pass like this. He comes to you, body joining with yours, murmuring things that aren't meant for human ears—that aren't meant for anyone corporeal. Each time you attempt to speak, you find your vocal cords painfully paralyzed. They die in your throat. Shrivel into useless tissue. All your questions bleed through your tongue to fester, leaving you with a sour taste in your mouth when you wake.

He's not real—your little Ghost. Only the most concerning reoccurring dream you've ever been plagued with.

You tell your friends about this dream. About this strange man who haunts your psyche when you can't quite get your bearings. You speak of his mask, and how he pins you with his gaze alone; how real his hands feel on you. Embarrassment forces you to omit the sensation of his cock and how it pummels you, but share the odd wounds you wake up with. Bitten lips, raw skin.

Their gazes shame you, and you do not speak of it again.

Some childish part of you had hoped that these dreams would cease the moment you spoke them out loud, but Ghost is persistent. He comes again, and again, and again. Hot breath wheezing. Tight throat growling. Firm hands squeezing.

Soon. Soon. Soon. Soon. Soon.

There is one night when your dream verges on the edge of reality, finally granting you the opportunity to talk to him.

Your Ghost.

Body rocking, legs bent and hips widened, your chest heaves as you force your eyes open as your question expels from your throat:

"Real?"

Ghost freezes. He stares down at you with the same, dark eyes he always does, and you try your best to keep your gaze locked on him. A shaky hand rises off of the bed, fingertips kissing his clothed cheek as you groan.

"Are you... real...?"

Ghost shrugs your hand off of him. "Sleep."

Unable to keep your eyes open any longer, you follow his order. Eyes fluttering shut, breath sighing from your nose, you allow slumber to capture you in her fickle grasp.

Though, you swear you feel clothed lips on yours and dull teeth piercing into your mouth before she can fully pull you under.

When Simon is finished with you, he stands at the edge of your bed like he usually does. Everything is tight. The knots that dot his back, the tension at the base of his skull—but everything feels quiet when he looks at you. There, in bed, ruined by him. Sleeping soundly, unaware of the apparition who's been taking you as his own for all these months.

Before he leaves, Simon pats the pocket of his jumper, and reminds himself to add more Benadryl powder to your sleepy-time tea mix before he leaves.

He can't have you asking questions like that again—not when he's too busy trying to make you his.

[decaying-sunflower]

The sun was drunk when I emerged from my chrysalis. The sky was a dark red, as if covered in all the blood I drank. Particles of death still floated in the air. Having left the womb that hung upon a tree, into which I have crawled aspiring for a transformation, I found myself in a changed reality, inhabiting a changed body. I stared in awe as the intoxicated sun disappeared behind the horizon. The red blood turned to unfathomable black darkness. I stood motionless for so long I began to feel the rotation of the earth itself. The perpetual spinning went on as though nothing had changed, like it was following a script that had been written for it eons ago and no catastrophe could distract it from the performance.

What terrible fate had befallen this earth in the time of my birth? The world that stood before me was deceased. Whatever humanity existed within it was now certainly gone. Behind the murmur of the wind, I could hear how the grasses howled in pain. In all the time I remained completely still, the moon had risen and set, the sun ventured in the sky, awkwardly. First it laughed, then cried, then it begged, the pain too overwhelming even for the sun to bear. And then it stood still, right in the centre of the sky, hungover, exhausted, empty. 

I looked into the sun till my eyes began to hurt and water. Tiredness. Cold. I thought I could feel the sun shiver, sense the goosebumps on its surface. I wished I could help it. Hand it a blanket. Tuck it into bed. Turn off the light. Let it rest. 

We remained unmoving, together. A blood drinking butterfly and the sun. You are supposed to burn me. Why does fulfilling your prophecy bring you such agony. Is destroying me not what you do. Is it not written into your very nature. 

The sun was merciful. It was kind. I did not burn. 

Days passed this way. The flowers around me were rotten. The trees had lost their minds in the avalanche of death and decay. I tried communicating with them, but they wouldn’t answer my calls. Whatever remnants of soul were still in them surely had become paralysed by pain, just as the grasses and the rivers and the seas. The whole world stopped for days, and then months and then entire years, while the earth kept on spinning. 

A fallen leaf lay on the surface of the dying planet. Brown and crusted. The leaf appeared to posses dark, black eyes. As the eyes glided over their surroundings, investigating the reality they were born into, two antennae emerged from below the leaf. The body of the creature twitched and suddenly what seemed to be a dried, lifeless leaf began to look like two wings. Raising its head, the moth-like creature appeared to possess a long, fragile proboscis. The moth soared into the sky, adjusting to the odd movements of its body, distracted by the metamorphosis of the earth. 

It was then that I found myself flying over this decomposing, decaying, confusing world that I was born into. 

It was a strange experience. I had never been able to fly, but it was my destiny, having transformed into the butterfly I was always fated to be. The hunger for blood was driving a dagger into my mind, and all the pain I felt was so strong I believed I was losing my sanity. I was awfully disoriented when I began my ascent, unable to grasp how much time had passed since the moment of my birth till I finally found the courage to move. Perhaps it had been hours, perhaps whole years had passed while I stood completely motionless, melting into this estranged world, becoming one with nature and feeling its pain as if it were mine to bear. I will never forget their cries. 

The ground below was covered in dust that shined under the rays of the intoxicated sun. The boreal forest which I knew, which was my home and the essence of all aliveness appeared to be a graveyard. The trees did not move in the wind, nor reflect the sun’s light.  But from behind the trees and from below the ground, I began to hear a sound, like a heartbeat. It was… hurting. But it was alive. 

I flew in search of the sound, trying to listen in, my flight turning into a maddening effort to find the source of blood. The starvation was driving me insane; I began to believe the sound was coming from within me and then from outer space, travelling way faster than was possible. Then I thought the sound was coming from other solar systems, other galaxies, other universes. And then, I believed the sound was coming from my own imagination. A fever dream, driven by a hunger way grander than my moth body could handle. A god-like yearning to devour. 

Yet, no matter how much I believed I was losing my mind, the sound kept getting louder. I knew I was moving in the right direction. The little blood-thirsty moth kept flapping its wings into plights of unbearable exhaustion, but it knew it couldn’t stop. It could not lose the heartbeat. The heartbeat was the most important thing it ever knew. The moth was a hungry, frightened child and the heartbeat was the mother that would soothe its aching soul. It must find it. It must find its mother and it must feed on her heart. 

The sound guided me to a crater that extended for miles. The surface of the earth around it was cracked and those cracks used to be filled with blood that had all but dried out. It bled. 

I knew this was the place, this is where I would find it, this was my salvation. I continued flying, straight into the crater. The darkness before my eyes terrified me. I had always been scared of the dark. But the heartbeat was so loud now, I could hear it ring within my own body, inside every fibre of my flesh. The sound was my guiding light. I trusted it. In this decayed world, it was the only thing that made me feel safe. I wanted to fall into it, to cry in its arms, to love it, to eat it, to consume it, to bathe in its love, to feel its warmth and care, to devour it until there is nothing left. 

I continued my descent into the crater when the first sight of light appeared. A pulsing red, like a continuation of the streaming blood. The same heartbeat rang all throughout the shining river. The same movement as the earth’s spinning, the same timbre as the howls of the dying forest.

The light grew brighter and warmer. Only then did I realise how cold I had been, how drained of life force. I needed saving. I was a crying baby, abandoned on a dying earth and I needed saving. The glow of the pulsing blood was my lifeline. It was my love and it was the meaning of my life. It was my saviour and it was my mother, it was God and the universe in liquid form. 

I continued moving closer till everything around me was shining, a beautiful ruby light. At the centre of the crater lay a comet, like a fallen angel, a dying star. It bled. Incapacitated by my hunger, I flew straight to it and began to drink. 

Gulping down the comet’s blood for what seemed like hours, I felt its life, its journey and its pain, its death and its rebirth. 

The grasses cried when the comet crashed onto the surface of the earth. In its own death, it was born, and its own birth it died. It yearned for a home, which it imagined existed on the sun which warmed the comet during its voyage. The warmth was a home that it would never return to. The comet crashed onto the earth and destroyed humanity. The moon burned in red flames and the sun was drunk as it crossed the horizon. And when the darkness came after the burning blood red sunset, the whole world was deceased. 

I remembered how I struggled to recognise myself in my new form. I was a blood drinking butterfly. In my starvation, I drank the comet’s blood, and in drinking the comet’s blood I fell in love with the comet that destroyed humanity. 

[bogcreacher]

CHALLENGING YOU TO DRAW THE BUG DRAGONS

on it boss o7

[moths-daily]

Vampire moth, please!! They drink blood from vertebrates.

Moth Of The Day #136

Vampire Moth

Calyptra thalictri

From the erebidae family. They have a wingspan of 40-45 mm. They tend to inhabit herb-rich and mosaic-like areas with steppe-like grasslands, rock fragments and sparse forests. They can be found in China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Southern Europe. This the most common species of the calyptra genus, which are all referred to as vampire moths, due to their ability to drink the blood of vertebraes, including humans.

[ungodly-thespian]

Ai ' m really glad Ai can learn more about Beforus ! Ait ' s really daifferent from where Ai grew up . Ai wonder aif Ai can faind laittle grub paictures of Talcus . . . He was probably super cute !!!

[bestworstcase]

pacing muttering witchworms contamination, "the softest penumbra of the madrugad's light, invoked carefully through the white flower of the watchman's tree" + the forgivable debt and the invisible opera, schemes to "distract the madrugad from her work with the calyptra" – but.

night, dawn, eclipse. RED THE DAWN AND BLACK THE NIGHT AND WHITE WHAT'S LEFT. ABOVE WE SEE, BENEATH WE KNOW. "calyptra, like the planet that occludes the star or the doylian dog that fails to bark, can be identified only by its absence."

thus, the madrugad is not—cannot be—the white flower. chilly winter dawn; but the red flower is dawn is the mare-in-the-tree. however: "in the times when nothing was forgotten, three flowers bloomed on the watchman's tree: black, red, and gold. red is the life that flows in the body's courses, but the blood of the carapace cross was golden. preservation teaches what endures." and in alchemical terms, citrinitas marks the dawning of the solar light.

"the watchman's tree has flowers three: black, red, and white. red is the life that flows in the body's courses, and white is the writhing at the body's core. hushery teaches what ends."

points at the madrugad. golden flower.

(you can't have an eclipse without a sun.)

"snow; broken mirrors; half-heard sky music; flowers of white, red and black; a blood-streaked winter dawn…"

the received version of the book of suns tells us that the wolf-divided was born from the sun-in-splendour's division. we know from this that the sun can be reborn only if the wolf joins the sun's other selves. only if the wolf's hunger is assuaged will it join its other selves, and only the flesh of its other selves can assuage the hunger of the wolf. a second dawn would herald the last day.

and

the veterans of the légion du seuil, who guard the boundaries of the waking world, tell stories of the labyrinths under the mansus, above the wood, and inside the moon, where the first fallen hours sleep, or hide, or rot: the gods-from-stone. why the labyrinths? because, the legionnaires say, there are hours ruling now who would fight to consume the last scraps of their old enemies; and those who feast would eclipse those who abstain.

lol.

lmao, even.

the white flower is described as the 'death of wisdoms' - but wisdom can pass into sleep, not death, when 'the rage of glass' is subjected to sufficiently powerful winter-aspect when the ragged crossroads arts are invoked.

ragged crossroads, with keeper winter and essential periost, draws a year-tally. ragged crossroads, with keeper winter and glassfinger toxin, distills the encaustum nillycant.

gestures vaguely. what's in kaunas?

night, dawn, freezing winds, faith, the wolf-divided's shadow, and a clandestine department of skolekosophy. four stolen seasonings and i'll have a stolen year, dominykas says genially. lol! lmao even!

azita asks for de motu corporum vetitorum to help her piece together how the wangle works; ouranoscopy, with keeper sky and essential periost, draws a year-tally. when chaima visits for the forgivable debt she says a reckoner lord "botched a conjuring"—it's a didumos. probably didn't even fucking mean to call down the dream of a star, just had too much sky-music and not enough periost.

the white waits west of the world, but she will not wait forever; and the madrugad is the winter's dawn.

[moldsporr]

Drew some ocs in homestuck panels

(He/Him for Marion, He/They Calyptra and Caltraps, all pronouns for Mavrik, They/Them for Formic)

[destyni-is-me]

Hello all!!! I wrote a radio drama that's going to be broadcast as part of a Halloween anthology tomorrow night at 9 p.m. CDT! All three stories are a fun time so if you don't have anything going on (or even if you're hanging out with people) you should tune in to 91.3 FM/kmsu.org and give them a listen!