Promethea moth rearing: cocoon care & pairing adults

[See the previous posting on how to find wild cocoons!] Once I collect some wild cocoons, I keep them outside in the garden in a suspended screen "cylinder cage".  (I make a cylinder of screen... dark aluminum screen is great for this... fold the long edge & staple it & then clamp the ends with big paper clamps.)  This way, they are exposed to winter & spring temperatures along with snow & rain, while being protected from birds & mice.  When the adults come out in early summer (~ late June to early July), I can see them in the cage & I'm ready for what's next.

The males & females look very different from each other (this is a great example of sexual dimophism), as you can see in this picture where some representative males are above & some females are below.

To the novice, they look like completely different species, but they're not!  Since these moths are members of the Family Saturniidae, they actually have no functioning mouth-parts as adults & live for 1 purpose: to find a mate & produce another generation.  Adult moths generally emerge from cocoons between maybe 9 am & noon and then expand their wings.  What the males will do is fly off by late morning but the females tend to stay right where they are perched when their wings expand.  The females then "call" the males by releasing an air-borne chemical (a pheromone) which males can detect from several miles away.  What I do with females when they emerge is to place them in separate screen cylinder cages with 1 end open.  They then hang in the cages, extend their abdomen like you can see in the next photo,

and then between ~ 2pm and 6 or 7 pm, males fly in.  When males begin to arrive they often fly in sweeping motions as they appear to being localizing where the female moth is perching.  To see examples of male flight behavior near females in open cages, watch the following videos:


 

More on this, part of the story, soon!