Subject: Beautiful
Geographic location of the bug: Eastern Cape South Africa
Date: 03/15/2021
Time: 05:05 PM EDT
Your letter to the bugman: Hi, I tried to identify this month, it’s either a polkadot wasp moth or a nine dot moth. Can you help? The orange markings seem different from both species.
How you want your letter signed: Kind regards
This is a Tiger Moth in the subfamily Arctiinae, and it reminds us very much of an image identified as the Heady Maiden Moth, Amata cerbera, which we identified a few years ago, so we searched for other members of the genus in South Africa. We found the Cool Hornet Moth, Amata kuhlweini, on iNaturalist and we verified its identity on African Moths where the common name is Cool Maiden.
Wow, Thank you for all the effort you put into identifying this stunning moth which now has a name~Cool Maiden!
I really appreciate it!
Kind regards
Liesl