Genius of the Press XII

Another not all that difficult GOP challenge, found here from the Scottish TV website.  What’s wrong with the story below?

6 comments to Genius of the Press XII

  • Heh, this one’s easy. The dark-bordered beauty moth the article talks about is a geometrid. The moth in the photo is certainly no geometrid. Looks like the genus Antheraea – I’m not sure which one, it doesn’t look quite like our North American polyphemus moth.

    The funny thing is, the dark-bordered beauty moth really is an attractive moth – there really was no reason to substitute it with a photo of something from the royal moth family.

  • JasonC.

    The moth pictured was once included in the genus Antheraea, but it is actually Opodiphthera eucalypti, an Australian saturniid. I remember that picture has been around on Wikipedia once.

  • Ted, as always, got in first with an almost perfect ID. The real moth is beautiful, and there are lots of other articles that properly illustrated it.

    And JasonC get’s lots of credit for the correct ID on the Saturniidae (and probably where the image came from in the first place). Australia has a pretty poor saturniidae diversity, with only 13 species and 6 genera (although they do get Attacus and Coscinocera!)

  • Wow. Nice. Every time I see a polyphemus (or polyphemus-esque moth) I stop breathing. SO AMAZING and the first truly spectacular “bug” I caught as a child. Stunnnnnerrrs. Now I’ll have to look up the bug they should have shown. Thanks for sharing. =)

  • okay, more in the spirit of your original post, I just looked up the actual moth, which took me seconds, and it looks NOTHING like the one they showed. Couldn’t they take 5 seconds and google it? What they showed doesn’t even have DARK BORDERS. sheesh. =)

  • Hey, Chris! Thought you might like this mostly moth blog post. He’s in CA, too! http://natureofaman.blogspot.com/2010/10/bugsheet-bingo.html