I think its the context, if you have moths in your home, they're eating clothing or laying eggs in your food.
Moths are cool outside tho.
Heres a couple I saw in Vietnam:
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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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The first guy looks like the clothes ate him back
He wasn't doing so well, the next morning he was dead.
I call this guy Jimothy Cricket
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For anyone who doesn't know about moth reproduction cycles: the adult stage of many moth species lack mouths and functional digestive tracts. Their entire adult life lasts only a handful of days; long enough to find a mate, lay eggs, and then die. They are fascinating animals.
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Here if you have moths in your home it is mostly just because they were attracted to the lights and flew inside through an open window.
Holy shit those are so beautiful
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Who sees a moth and says "ew kill it?!" I don't know this person
Moths are considered pests because they can eat your clothes. Though personally ive never run into this because I've never had moths living in my house.
Im too lazy to Google but theres soemthing like 3x the moths to every butterfly species... Surely only one or two specifically eat human cloth materials
It's more like five or six, but yes they're highly specialized.
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The moths that eat your clothes are the larva and they’re teensy tiny so you probably wouldn’t see em.
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Moths are the one harmless thing I have an irrational fear of. A couple of times when I was very young a biggish moth got into my room a terrorized me (I'm guessing because of the way the light played off of my clothes).
I don't go out of my way to exterminate them, but if one follows me inside and resists my first couple of attempts to catch and release it, I'm going to smash the hell out of it.
I'm mostly over the visceral fear at this point, but if a big bastard is flying around a porch light I'm not sticking around.
Edit to add: I would probably smack a butterfly out of the air if it got in my face the way moths do. Equal opportunity irrationality.
I couldn't say why, but many of them freak me out. I don't tend to demand that someone kill it, but I feel the "ew."
A friend can't stand their flight pattern. It's too chaotic. I find misquitos and flies peskier, so I think this one might be a phobia.
It's their flight pattern for me too.
Also, I have never been in a place with enough butterflies that some would get in my face, or I might have ended up smacking some that catch me distracted.
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Surprised nobody's mentioned the actual difference yet, i.e. moths are more likely to fuck your wardrobe up
That's just a few specific species, called clothes moths. They pretty much only go for animal fibers.
Moths can be cute too
I find it interesting how in english there are 2 different words for moths/butterflies :3. In my native language there aren't (though colloquially butterflies are referred to by the diminutive and moths by the base word.. at least in my experience)
Anywho, moths are cool, I like them :3
Curious. In polish there are also two words. Moth is "ćma" and butterfly is "motyl". Funfact: There is also "ćmić" whichs kinda archaic,but can mean giving very small light (for example, embers), a very small but constant pain or shading/covering/dimming something.
And apparently the word comes from latin "tenebra". Quite dramatic, as it means the word has it roots in word for darkness itself. Quite a name for a small, mostly blind furry butterfly wannabe.
Yeah, in lithuanian we just have drugys, though as I said in my experience people use drugys for moths, and drugelis for butterfly, though if you search drugys on the internet and go to pictures you will mostly get pictures of butterflies :3 you'd have to search for "naktinis drugys" (nocturnal butterfly) to get moths
And apparently the word comes from latin “tenebra”.
No, what source told you that? It's from Proto-Slavic tьma (darkness), which is a native word. Related to Latin tenebrae, yes, but through a common ancestor.
That'll be because all butterflies are just moths that fly in the daytime. Moths are substantially older and have substantially more variance.
As a side note, the 'buttetfly' in the famous kids book 'The very hungry caterpillar' is in fact a moth as it comes from a cocoon.
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You guys kill months WTF!?
yeah, they suck.
they eat my clothes and they eat my grains.
fuck wool moths and grain moths, fuckers.
From what I read down the thread only some species do that, the ones where I'm at don't do that kind of shit so I guess I was naive.
lucky, like 90% of moths I see are the ones that eat my shit and yeah I'm killing those fuckers, and seeing one of them makes me have to like pull out my clothes and check all my stored grains for infestation.
if you are infested it's a bitch to get rid of them. grain moths are nasty little fuckers.
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I accidentally had a moth die in my bedroom recently. :( I felt/feel like a monster. It was big and pretty(ish), but...it was big enough and flew aggressively enough that I initially thought a hummingbird might have gotten in. It triggered my bug fear/fight-or-flight (I traditionally choose flight). I thought I had more time to work up the courage for the rescue mission. :(
The silver lining is another big moth got in the next night and I was fueled by guilt on an extensive 2-3 AM rescue mission that involved me turning off every light, drawing video game-like checkpoint markers with the light of my phone (just a theory I had), holding a box fan pointed at the door towards escape, etc... And it fucking WORKED. You just have to be really patient for like 20 minutes. Or 30-45. It took a bit.
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Only September. I don't know why, but there's a popular song about it and I wanted to fit in so I sleep through that one.
Look, February was always missing a few days in the shed. We knew it was inevitable.
But nah, I don't get it. Moths are pretty chill. maybe I swatted a few in my face, but I don't go out of my way to squish them.
Remember butterflies do not splay their wings like that. That's a dead butterfly from someone's collection, so already killed.
If they are sitting soaking up sunshine to heat up their bodies they will definitely do that on their own.
Moths are night pollinators and very essential for nature to thrive!
When I find one indoors, I try to use a cup and paper to put it outside. Years ago I was ignorant of them, and many insects in general, and I feel sad whenever someone kills moths, spiders, etc.
More so now when insects and other small animals are seeing a mass extinction event. We desperately need more of them, not less.
My mom tried to get me to go weed her garden when I was a kid and I first ran in to this weirdness. It still doesn't make any sense to me.
Like... you're working to grow these plants that you think are beautiful... and if any plant you decide is not beautiful dares to grow you want me to go kill it? You think it's moral to ask someone to go kill things just for being alive and not looking pretty enough to you?
I distinctly remember being told that plants aren't humans and then being grounded for arguing that God isn't human and yet him deciding that he didn't like the looks of some humans based on their skin color and yanking them all out of his 'garden' would be unforgivably evil.
ah yes the "grounded for sharing an opinion the parent doesn't like" rule
comes second only to the .ml "banned for rule 1, 2"
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weeds are removed for good reason, though. they are an invasive species with little value and they will end up killing off the rest of the garden if left unchecked.
The heavy handed metaphor is one plant being a cat and the other a rabid leopard. Even if you love all animals, you and the cats aren't safe with a leopard wandering around. But I'm sorry that some parents are so impatient with their kids that they can't break this down to them logically.
Counterpoint: Dandelions
Pretty much the perfect plant that has nothing but positive benefits. People just decided they were a weed despite them being great for the soil, great for bees, lush, resilient, and literally every part of them being edible.
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I AM ABSOLUTELY HERE FOR PRO MOTH PROPAGANDA
i love them both so much 🥹
Lämp
I don't ever remember feeling ewww towards the moths or others like it. In my mind they are not that different than butterflies. Am I weird?
In my experience, Moths are more likely to get in yournface and other destructive and annoying activities.
Butterflies just sort of mill about minding their own business.
I think the real difference between moths and butterflies, from my own observations, is that moths will stow their wings backwards like most other insects when not in use, while butterflies will just fold them upwards, not moving them tailwards at all.
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Nah, both are 'oh neat' until they move then it's "omfg aaaaaaaaahhhhhhj"
I'm a huge fan of moths, I keep a photo album with a photo for every species's I've found. So far around 90, my favorite specimen is Basilodes pepita. I've only every seen two, extremely striking in person, photo can't do it justice
Moths are just goth butterflies, LBR. (Rosy maple moths are pastel goths.)
Moths do have more of a tendency to slip into the house and be a pest, but I find them pretty straightforward to catch with a cup and relocate outside. I keep my pantry food in sealed containers to avoid uninvited critters eating it before I can, and the vaaaast majority of moths don't eat clothes (plus even the few who do primarily dine on animal fibers, which leaves my plant-fiber wardrobe alone), so they don't really have much ability to cause me any real grief beyond my desire for them not to fly in my face and also my desire not to hurt them by accident.
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