Fulgora candelaria - Thai Butterfly or Moth?

Fulgora candelaria, butterfly, moth or luminous lantern fly?

I'm going to guess it's a butterfly, it isn't luminous and the colors are too good for it to be a moth.

If you look on the net there are loads of pictures of the Fulgora candelaria but the only info on them is in Chinese, now these are as common as muck all over South East Asia including Thailand and China, my guess looking at them is that to a Chinese and maybe even a Thai they look like a delicious little snack, just look at that juicy fat body on him, you just know they are going to eat these critters, most likely fried just the same as they do locusts and crickets.

I messed up a bit on the picture size on this one, it was supposed to be 800 wide but something went wrong, anyway in real life the biggest they get is 2 to 2 1/2 inches, on this picture it looks like about a foot wide.

https://teakdoor.com/Gallery/albums/u...candelaria.jpg

Thai Butterflies Main Page.

YouTube - Mantis eating a lantern-fly

YouTube - 20100105 ??? Fulgora candelaria

Have a question for those that observe butterflies and their behavior.

Recently I have observed two separate incidents where thousands of butterflies, yellows of some sort, hatch and fly their initial flights.

Yesterday on the golf course was one occurrence. The other was four days ago at the house.

Thousands and thousands, no exaggeration, of the yellow beauties were in the air. Monstrous hatches, and each occurred about 9 10 AM. This is a normal time for a hatch as they need some sun on their wings to get the blood flowing. Each incident lasted about an hour.

Now for the question.

In all cases 100% of the flight paths were in the same direction. North. It was almost as if I was watching the migration of the butterflies you see on TV. Can't recall their name but very common in the Americas. Monarch butterfly ??

There was NO deviation at least within my sight area.

They were quite stunning occasions, seeing soooooooo many of the beauties in flight at the same time. I have observed and photographed butterflies for quite some time here in Thailand and have never seen such enormous hatches.

The volume of the hatch made it obvious that they were all flying in the same direction.

Just curious if anyone else has seen this or has an explanation of the behavior

E. G.

EG that must have been a great sight to see. The only swarms of insects i've seen have been those bloody termites when the rain comes.

DD you must see a lot of those lantern bugs around Pattaya. :)

The British Museum designated them to the group of homopterous insects.

Quote:

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Homopterous
adj.
Of or belonging to the order Homoptera, which includes the cicadas, aphids, and scale insects, characterized by sucking mouthparts.

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Neither a butterfly nor a moth, its a lantern bug as Larn says