Wings like dinner plates
Its wings have a larger area than those of almost any other insect: about the size of a dinner plate.
The Borneo rainforest · Butterflies and moths
Atlas moth
Attacus atlas
A vast, rust-brown moth with clear triangular windows in its wings, and wing tips that look like snakes' heads.
- Size
- Wingspan up to 25cm or more
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Forests of South-East Asia, from India to Indonesia
Flaps after you, slow and heavy. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Atlas moth
Good to know
Six things about the atlas moth
A snake on each wing
The tip of each forewing looks like the head of a snake, with an eye and a mouth. When disturbed it shakes them slowly.
It never eats
The adult has no working mouth. It lives for a week or two on the fat it stored as a caterpillar.
Windows in its wings
Each wing has a see-through patch with no scales. Nobody knows quite what they are for.
Found by scent
The male's feathery antennae can pick up a female's scent from several kilometres away.
Its silk is used
The cocoon is spun from tough brown silk, which people in India weave into a cloth called fagara.
The real thing
Photos of the atlas moth
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Look near lights at the forest edge after dark, and on tree trunks by day, where it rests with wings spread flat. Take an adult with you.
How to help
It needs forest with the trees its caterpillars eat. Butterfly houses breed it, which takes pressure off wild ones.
Keep going
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