Oreta rosea

Normally when I have a scientific name in the title of a blog post, there's a safe bet that I'm going to discuss a plant.  But take a closer look at the image below and then see if that's the case today.

No, I'm not going to talk about the grass in the pic, or the pine tree at the top of the photo.  Instead, Oreta rosea is the moth in the photo that is doing a pretty good job of mimicking a fallen leaf.

Oreta is a leaf mimic moth and like many other species in the order Lepidoptera the insect disguises itself for protection from predation.  Perhaps the most famous case of a moth disguising itself is that of the peppered moth.  The peppered moth was primarily white, with gray and black spots, and blended in with the lichens on trees in England.  After the industrial revolution, when soot stained all the lichens to a darker color, the darker colored of the species survived with greater ease and thus became prevalent.

 

Here you can see the fat belly of the insect, a good telltale sign that this is considered a moth and not a butterfly.  Moths also usually have fuzzy antennae whereas the butterfly's are slender.  Most moths are nocturnal, but butterflies generally are active during daylight. There are other differences such as wing couplings and coloration (and the pupae are different), but the antennae and body type are the easiest ways to distinguish butterflies from moths.