Thanks to their ancestors developing a taste for fur and feathers its no wonder clothes moths are partial to a good munch on fabrics and soft furnishings, says Richard Jones
Humans have only been human for a few hundred thousand years, and likely clothed for just 50,000–90,000 years; but clothes moths evolved millions of years ago, and are closely related to the many tiny moth species that still live today in animal or bird nests, eating moulted fur, feathers and the occasional dead nestling.
This explains why clothes moths only eat carpets, soft furniture, curtains or clothes made from animal-derived wool or silk, though they also take other fibres if mixes are used in the fabrics, plus eiderdown, feather stuffing, horse-hair packing and fur coats.
Many small brown or grey moth species in the family Tineidae still scavenge in this way, but Tineola bisselliella and Tinea pellionella are almost wholly dependent on clothing.
Their high pest status 100 years ago has been reduced by unpalatable man-made fibres, the drying of central heating and the removal of eggs and larvae by vacuuming.
Main image: Echte Kleidermotte (Tineola bisselliella) © Olaf Leillinger, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons