Back from hiatus and back to the Genius of the Press insect-news-failure series! Fresh off the presses from last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK was shut down for a massive infestation of clothes moths. The picture shown here from “The Nation” story is a far cry from a proper clothes moth (Tineidae) – looks like a Noctuidae of some kind.
But it’s hard to blame them for getting this moth wrong when UK pest control companies don’t even know what a clothes moth is. Here is Instakil’s version of “the moth” that happens to be a Plusiinae noctuid.
And the winner for failed identification goes to this other UK company “Hawk Force“. Not even a moth – but a skipper butterfly!
