What in the world??!?

[Lukero]

That's freaky.
And why can't they just name it Hummingmoth?

[psfrancis]

I work in the garden center of my store. While watering my eye was caught by what I thought was a hummingbird. I watched it until it flew away. When I got home I researched and found that it is a Clearwing Moth. How interesting. I wished I had my cell phone so I could took its picture. Now that I know what it is I understand why it was not afraid of me like hummingbirds usually are. Why would you want to capture it? It is to fun to see them in the wild.

[redheadache]

This moth is really interesting. It has a coiled tongue that is three times the length of it's body in order to lap the nectar from the flower while hovering over it. It is not considered a pollinator because it never lands on the flower. It also comes back to the same patch of flowers day after day giving ample opportunity to check them out.

Additionally, it has eyes typical of a nocturnal moth (refracting superposition compound eye) but is diurnal. Because they do their business in the daytime, their eyes have evolved to include qualities not known in any other superposition eye.

As a side note, it hovers while mating. Skills.