Insects · Lepidoptera · Tineidae

Common Clothes Moth

Tineola bisselliella

Not Evaluated

It has not yet been assessed against the IUCN criteria. See full glossary

The common clothes moth, or clothes moth, is a lepidopteran of the family Tineidae, subfamily Tineinae. It is the type species of its genus Tineola and was first described by the Swedish entomologist Arvid David Hummel in 1823. The specific name is often misspelt biselliella, for instance by G. A. W. Herrich-Schäffer when he founded Tineola in 1853.

Size

9 cm – 16 cm

Diet

Herbivore

Feeds mainly on plants.

Activity

Crepuscular

Active above all at dawn and dusk.

Social structure

Solitary

Lives and hunts alone, joining others only to breed.

Sighting difficulty

Unknown

FreshwaterGrasslandHerbivore Crepuscular Solitary Insect Freshwater Grassland

Fun facts

GeneralIts larvae digest the keratin in wool; the adult barely eats and hardly flies.
Its larva can digest keratin, the protein of wool and hair, something almost no animal manages, thanks to a gut with extreme chemical conditions.
It attacks above all garments stored dirty, because sweat and food residues give the larva the nutrients wool alone does not.
The larva digests keratin, the protein of hair, wool, skin and feathers, which hardly any animal can make use of because its disulphide bridges make it resistant to digestive enzymes.
It does not manage this alone: its gut carries bacteria that secrete keratinase enzymes.
The adult eats nothing at all and lives about thirty days; all the damage is done by the larva.
It shuns light, which is why it always turns up in dark, undisturbed corners.
It probably comes from central or southern Africa and reached Europe in the late eighteenth century; it spread worldwide in the twentieth with central heating, which gave it the dry conditions it prefers.