Clothes moths have made a wreck out of one of my scarves, and have attacked a couple of pairs of wool pants and a sweater.
Do they eat wool that’s still on the sheep?
Damn, that’s a weird question. Good one, though.
No.
Being Armenian, I really feel that I should know the answer to this…
Clothes Moths original habitat was bird’s nests where they fed on feathers and animal hair that was incorporated into the nest. I guess that’s where they got their taste for wool.
It’s an evergreen!
Answer is no. The moth larve are fairly vulnerable and would not survive long being attached to a moving animal.
Not to mention that the wool on a sheep, greasy with lanolin, is a very different environment from the clean fibers in woolen clothing.
There is less information in that thread than there already is (almost entirely thanks to Springtime for Spacers) in this one.
Yet we are supposed to believe that they lived in bird’s nests, where they would certainly be extremely vulnerable, not least to being eaten by the birds, many of which are partial to, on the alert for, and well equipped to catch tasty bugs to eat. Even birds who do not like to eat bugs are capable of cleaning them out of their nests. I would think a sheep’s fleece would be a haven of security compared to a bird’s nest. For sure there are bugs that live in sheep’s fleeces, why should not moth larvae be amongst them?
Clothes moth must have evolved somewhere before humans provided them with the nice new, comfy habitat of our woolen clothes. Unless someone has actual evidence to the contrary, and none has been provided yet, I shall continue to believe that the most likely natural habitat for them would be the fleeces of fleecy animals.
Every summer, I went to work on the family farm in Canada. No, sheep don’t have moths or even moth larva. Note that sheep do leave tufts of wool everywhere.
This site lists all the common external insect pests for sheep.
Birds are generally too busy feeding their ravenous offspring to be rummaging about in the nest for a possible tiny morsel of food there - they’re often not even particularly. Interested in removing obvious parasites from the nest. It’s all about feeding those gaping mouths.
animals adapted toiling in greasy fleece will live there. Others won’t.