You know you’ve found a large moth when…
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After a 40 year career as a wildlife biologist, you can’t believe what you’re seeing is real.
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Your ruler isn’t long enough to get a good measurement (2nd image), so you go back to get a longer ruler (3rd image) and that isn’t long enough, so you scramble around to find a carpenter’s measuring tape to fully span the wings (4th image).
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Your astonishment is like the joy of a child on Christmas morning; you start laughing and giggling uncontrollably.
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The largest moth on your sheet has a wingspan 40X the size of the smallest one.
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You stay up until 3:30 a.m. journaling about one moth.
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You start taking selfies...with a moth (last image).
To the best of my ability to measure this critter, the wingspan (with a bit of the tip of the right FW missing) is about 27.8 cm, so it would probably be about 28.5 cm (11.2 in) if it were intact. The species is said to have the largest wingspan of any Lepidopteran in the world.
The moth was initially discovered on the sheet by Mary Kay Sexton. I had overlooked it.
To read more of the story, see:
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/gcwarbler/13211-mothing-in-panama
