As soon as a moth can find a suitable place to cling after it is
out, it hangs by the feet and dries the wings and down. Long
before it is dry if you try to move a moth or cause disturbance,
it will eject several copious jets of a spray from the abdomen
that appears, smells and tastes precisely like the liquid found in
the abandoned case. If protected from the lightest touch it will
do the same. It appeals to me that this liquid is abdominal,
partly thrown off to assist the moth in emergence; something
very like that bath of birth which accompanies and facilitates
human entrance into the world. It helps the struggling moth in
separating from the case, wets the down so that it will pass the
small opening, reduces the large abdomen so that it will escape the
exit, and softens the case and silk where the moth is working.
With either male or female the increase in size is so rapid that
neither could be returned to their cases five minutes after they
have left them.
It is generally supposed that the spray thrown by a developing
moth is for the purpose of attracting others of its kind.
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