A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

This moth spent an afternoon near our door. She seemed completely unshaken as I moved closer to take her photo. By the evening she was gone. 

I went online to identify her. I searched “large brown moth with lighter stripes.” There are a lot of brown moths. None like this one. I varied the search. No luck. I posted the photo on social media asking for help and an hour later I received a comment: female io moth. I searched “female io moth” and there she was! 

I did an earlier column about an io moth that I helped recover after he had smashed against our window. He was battled but unbowed and with my help, lived to fly another day. I even wrote that the female is much larger and brown or rust colored. When wings of either gender are unfurled, dark blue eyespots appear to scare predators. 

When I searched “io moth,” only photos of males appeared. One has specifically to search “female io moth,” to find the female. I searched “cardinal” and about three-quarters of the photos were of the male. Same with the Baltimore oriole.  A search of “human” and “homo sapiens” yielded a terrifying variety of pre-historic folks and future mutants, with few photos of how any of us look today. I guess if you are human enough to search, you don’t need a current photo. The female human was represented about as frequently as the female cardinal.

 The systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species is “sexual dimorphism.” Female insects are often much larger than the male, due to carrying large numbers of eggs. Female birds are often less colorful than the males to protect them from predators. The more colorful the males, the more attractive to both mates and predators. 

I think the female io moth and other species have been shortchanged by internet searches. The human is also considered to have a degree of sexual dimorphism, but less than many other species. Whether this persists and what it means is yet to be determined.