cynthia sex

[Lisa Larson]

Hi!  I have a few adult cynthia ricini moths who have just hatched and
I'm wondering about their sex lives.  (These are the first saturniidae
I've ever raised.)  They aren't active at all-- they didn't move from
their cocoons after hatching; eventually I took them out of the cage to
take pictures of them, then put them back in and they seem to have
stayed exactly where I placed them, clinging to the screen wall of the
cage.  There were three of them; I released two yesterday.  I wasn't
able to sex them... they looked basically the same to me in terms of
wing pattern, shape and abdomen size (large!). 

So the moth I have remaining has been out of the cocoon for 48 hours and
I'm pretty sure it hasn't been having any sex since none of the moths
ever seemed to move at all.  Yet right now it seems to be laying eggs...
I picked it up and it got excited, something extended from its abdomen,
and it deposited an egg-like thing against my finger, along with some
red-brown fluid.  Then I looked around the cage and noticed a few other
eggs stuck to the screen where it had been sitting-- and where one of the
other moths had been.  

I guess either (1) the moths were getting it on when I wasn't looking
and then stealthily returned to their normal locations for when I looked
next; (2) those are sperm packets, not eggs-- but they look an awful lot
like eggs; or (3) female moths lay unfertilized eggs sometimes. 

Anyone know what's going on here?  Also, are my moths normal to be so
docile and uninterested in flight?  Oh, and how long do these moths
live?

Thanks,
Lisa