Is it a moth?
February 11, 2010
Large dragon fly and moth cross breed on my sisters farm in the semi desert Great Karoo region of South Africa. They came out at night to outside lights. The cat likes to eat them.
karoo
South Africa, Great Karoo
Dear karoo,
Wow, that is a large Antlion. Antlions in the family Myrmeleontidae are not closely related to either Dragonflies or Moths, but rather, they are classified in the order Neuroptera, which included Lacewings and Owlflies. We tried a websearch of “Antlion South Africa” and we found ourselves on an interesting Discover Life page that allowed us to check various descriptions, and results popped up. We checked “abdomen color red uniformly” based on one of your photos, and we got a list of four species. We did not get any images, so we decided to web search the names individually. Palpares immensus is listed on a website, the Antlion Pit, as being: “Another ‘giant’ antlion; found in South Africa.” While we are uncertain of the species identify of your Antlion, we would wager a guess that Palpares immensus might be your Antlion. At least we had success with finding a nice Kruger Part Times page on Antlions.
