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 <\/p>
\u00a0<\/span>Humans have only been human for a few hundred thousand years, and likely clothed for just 50,000\u201390,000 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<\/a><\/strong>, eating moulted fur, feathers and the occasional dead nestling. <\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n Many small brown or grey moth species in the family Tineidae still scavenge in this way, but Tineola bisselliella<\/i> and Tinea pellionella<\/i> are almost wholly dependent on clothing. <\/span><\/p>\n T<\/span>heir 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Main image: Echte Kleidermotte (Tineola bisselliella<\/i>) \u00a9 Olaf Leillinger, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n 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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":24930,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/do-clothes-moths-only-eat-clothes.jpg",1500,1000,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/do-clothes-moths-only-eat-clothes-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/do-clothes-moths-only-eat-clothes-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/do-clothes-moths-only-eat-clothes-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/do-clothes-moths-only-eat-clothes-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/do-clothes-moths-only-eat-clothes.jpg",1500,1000,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/do-clothes-moths-only-eat-clothes.jpg",1500,1000,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"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","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/24929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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