# Ground Moths

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ground-moths/761232>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 29, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ground-moths/761232 "2016-07-29T21:28:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Reyemile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@Reyemile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reyemile)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ground-moths/761232/1 "2016-07-29T21:28:22Z")

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Walking through Montreal today, I saw close to 20 moths all fluttering furiously into the ground. They were flapping their wings but not flying at all, scraping their thoraxes into the dirt and occasionally bouncing a few inches in the air. And these were all individual moths spread out over a 2km path, so it seemed likely that this was the normal, independent behavior of these bugs.

Any idea what they were up to?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2016, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ground-moths/761232/2 "2016-07-30T07:37:24Z")

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Could be laying eggs, if it’s a species whose larvae live on grass roots or some such.

Or it could be a mating thing - either a specific motion to attract a mate visually, or releasing pheromones.