Nature · Insects & other invertebrates

Elephant hawkmoth

One brood, May–July · wingspan 45–60 mm

Deilephila elpenor — Sphingidae (hawkmoths)

The pink-and-olive moth that turns up in moth traps and greenhouses across Britain and looks too tropical to be real. Its name has nothing to do with its size: the caterpillar is grey-brown with a tapering, trunk-like front end that it draws back to swell two big false eyes, and that trunk gives the moth its name. Adults fly at dusk, hover at honeysuckle, and have some of the best night vision known in any animal — they can distinguish colours by starlight.

How to spot them

▸Adult olive-green boldly striped with bright pink, including a pink fringe and pink hindwings
▸Body and legs pink; the moth rests in a swept-back delta shape like all hawkmoths
▸Caterpillar grey-brown (rarely green), with a retractable trunk-like snout and two pairs of black-and-white eyespots
▸Caterpillar has a short pointed tail horn and is found on rosebay willowherb, bedstraws and garden fuchsia
▸Flies at dusk in June, hovering at honeysuckle and valerian

How to know it

Olive-green and bright pink, with pink legs and a pink-fringed wing, in a moth trap in June

Elephant hawkmoth — startlingly gaudy for a British moth.

Named not for its size but for its caterpillar's trunk-like snout, which is pulled back to swell two false eyes

Elephant hawkmoth — the trunk is the front segments, retracted to make a snake-like head.

Experiments showed it can tell colours apart by starlight, a feat no vertebrate is known to manage

Elephant hawkmoth — colour vision at light levels of around 0.0001 lux.

Its caterpillars strip rosebay willowherb and bedstraw, and turn up on garden fuchsias

Elephant hawkmoth, whose larvae are among the most often reported 'strange caterpillars' in Britain.

Its specific epithet is the name of the companion of Odysseus who fell from Circe's roof

Elephant hawkmoth — Deilephila elpenor, after Elpenor.

It has a smaller relative with the same pink-and-olive scheme but no pink stripe down the body

Elephant hawkmoth contrasted with the small elephant hawkmoth, Deilephila porcellus.

Quick-fire facts

•Deilephila elpenor; Elpenor was the crewman of Odysseus who fell drunk from Circe's roof and broke his neck
•Larval foodplants are rosebay willowherb, great willowherb, bedstraws and, in gardens, fuchsia
•The caterpillar's 'trunk' is the retractable front of the body; withdrawing it inflates the fourth and fifth segments and makes the eyespots bulge
•It overwinters as a pupa in a cocoon among leaf litter or just under the soil surface
•Work by Almut Kelber and colleagues showed the moth can discriminate colour in dim starlight, the first animal demonstrated to do so
•It is common and widespread throughout Britain and Ireland and has been increasing
•The small elephant hawkmoth, Deilephila porcellus, is a smaller, buffer, pink-washed species without the elephant caterpillar's snout
•Like other hawkmoths it hovers to feed on a long proboscis rather than settling on the flower

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Sources

Butterfly Conservation — Elephant Hawk-moth
Paul D. Brock — Britain's Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland