This question was suggested by Terrifel in a thread I started, and it caught my eye.
Why do hummingbird hawk-moths imitate hummingbirds? What advantage is there?
Just a guess: Actual hummingbirds are pretty agile and aggressive. They will readily dive bomb larger birds, either singly or in groups and try to drive them off. It might be an advantage to resemble something that will try to poke your eyes out if you mess with it.
Eureka! So that’s what those little buggers are. I’ve been wondering ever since the first time I saw one.
I’m not sure how much of it is imitation and how much is just implementing the same techniques to exploit the same resources.
Wait a minute…Do these criters live in Europe?
I ask, because I several times (though very rarely) noticed critters flying around flowers in southern France that made me think of hummingbirds. I was mightily intrigued but never succeded in catching one to look at it more closely.
OK…I googled I found the answer to my previous questions.
Thanks to the OP. This thread solved a mystery that had been bugging me since an early age!!! 
No, if someone know their french name? ( ** Colibri ** , maybe?)
I don’t know the french name, but the latin name of one of the most common one might help you search for it; they’re Macroglossum stellatarum.
Thanks. I found the french name.
And you’re not going to tell us?
- Tamerlane
Please share, mon cher.
I agree. They evolved to use the same resources.
I saw one here in Arkansas.
I didn’t think anybody would be interested : the Moro sphinx (sphinx is the name given to several moths. As for “Moro”, I’ve no clue.)
It’s always been my assumption as well that there’s not any demonstrable imitation going on. Kind of like saying, “Why do bats imitate birds?” Parallel evolution does not necessarily imply imitation.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be all one or all the other though; in fact, it’s hard to draw the line - we might think of mimicry as being a ‘trick’, but in fact it’s just a case of having similar features in order to reap similar advantages. In the case of these moths, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a little of both - especially as there are examples of more blatant mimicry in the same family (not sure why mimicry seems to run in families, but I think it can be said that it does).
There are no hummingbirds in much of the region covered by this moth though, so mimicry seems less likely than simple convergence.
I can think of no possible evolutionary advantage that would accrue to a moth for being thought a hummingbird. First off, in my experience those moths fly at night, and hummingbirds fly in daylight. So they would have two different sets of predators, right? So what predator would the moth be “fooling”? Owls? bats? Nightjars/other nighthawks, etc.? No wait, they’r crepuscular, not nocturnal, right? I suppose a bat large enough to eat a hummingbird sphinx would not be likely to mess with a hummingbird, but would a bat–nocturnal–be familiar enough with an actual hummingbird–diurnal–for such confusion to be beneficial to the moth? Not necessarily arguing; just doesn’t fall all that neatly into place for me.
Hummingbird hawkmoths are actually day-flying, but the only advantage I can think of from mimicry of a hummingbird is that slower predators might not even bother giving chase if they think you’re a fast hummingbird (rather than a somewhat slower moth).
In my experience trying to catch them, they’re very fast moths…
They are fast, but I think a real hummingbird would be faster.