The green wings of the luna moth, with their elegant, long tails, aren’t just about style.
New research finds they also help save the insect from becoming a snack for a bat. The fluttering tails appear to
create an acoustic signal that is attractive to echolocating bats, causing the predators to zero in on the
wings rather than more vital body parts. Scientists pinned down the tails’ lifesaving role by taking 162 moths and
plucking the tails off 75 of them. They used fishing line to tether two moths—one with tails, the other without—to the

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