Elephant hawk-moth

Deilephila elpenor is a hawk-moth in Sphingidae. Linnaeus described it as Sphinx elpenor in 1758. [1]

Pink borders and oblique bands cross the khaki forewings. The hindwings have a black basal field and a pink outer field of fairly even width. Pink also accents the head, thorax and abdominal midline against a khaki ground. The amount of forewing pink varies. [1]

The species occurs through much of Europe and temperate Asia to Korea and Japan. In the Russian Far East it occupies deciduous and mixed woodland. [1]

Mature caterpillars can be brown or green. Their enlarged anterior abdominal segments carry conspicuous eyespots; withdrawing the head and thorax makes this region swell during a defensive response. Pupation occurs in a mesh cocoon among ground debris, and the pupa overwinters. [1]

Chinese larval records include willowherbs, bedstraws, balsams and grapevines. Adults visit flowers after dark to drink nectar. [1]

Kelber and colleagues trained freely flying moths to associate blue or yellow artificial flowers with sugar solution. In unrewarded tests, the moths distinguished the learned colour from multiple grey shades at a luminance of 0.0001 cd/m², corresponding to dim starlight. Additional tests with lighter and darker versions of the same colour supported colour discrimination rather than a simple brightness rule. [2]

A separate experiment trained moths to green or turquoise flowers. They continued to select the rewarded colour when the illumination changed between white and broad-spectrum yellow light, demonstrating colour constancy under the tested conditions. [2]