Meet Amata Trigonophora.
Sounds like a TV personality from Greece but is just your garden-variety tiger moth. I'd figured that much out – it's pretty self-evident – but I did some Googling anyway. It was in the backyard sitting on the pumpkins, after all, so I figured I might as well find out if it was introducing some sort of exotic disease. If only.
I did, however, uncover some intriguing facts.
- It's from the family Arctiidae.
- It's a very big family – there are about 11,000 members.
- It is quite harmless.
- It looks an awful lot like Amata Huebneri.
- Huebneri is far more popular on blogspot (seriously, they're all over the place).
- Amata is a speck on the map in the Musgrave Ranges near the South Australia/Northern Territory border. I don't know if they have a lot of moths.
- AMATA stands for the Australasian Microarray Associated Technologies Association.
- While staying at the Amata Resort in Phuket you can be "relaxed and enchanted by the natural charms of the world's prestigious resort island on the Andaman Sea".
- In Roman mythology, Amata was married to King Latinus and had a daughter, Lavinia. Her story gets very messy and complicated and she ends up hanging herself over some guy called Tumus.
- The Tiger Moth biplane was designed in the 1930s by Geoffrey de Havilland, cousin of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine. Glamorous!
- The plane remained in service with the RAF until 1952 but it mostly used nowadays for joy flights.
- "Joy flight", like "fun run", is an oxymoron.
- The online game Tiger Moth isn't worth playing for more than a few minutes.
- Tiger Moth is also "The English roots dance band world's answer to Bembeya Jazz or Buena Vista Social Club (well, maybe . . . !)", according to their website.
No comments:
Post a Comment