How fast can they grow compared to humans?

If humans grew like a Manduca, we would be giants! For example, the average human baby weighs 6 lbs. If that baby grew like a Manduca, by the time it was full grown at age 18, it would weigh 60,000 lbs or about 30 tons.

What do Manduca see?

Manduca have special eyes called compound eyes. In a sense, insects have about 40,000 eyes, as each compound eye has many facets with an individual lens. Having lots of small eyes allows insects to sense movement much better than humans can. However, they don’t see things as clearly as we do.

The picture below (left) shows how we see flowers. We can see each petal and leaf very clearly. The picture below (right) shows the same flowers through insect’s compound eyes. Insects do not need to see things as clearly as we do because they are more worried about being eaten! Seeing the movement of an attacking predator is far more important for their survival.

What do Manduca eat?

Larval Manduca is a pest on tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and other plants in the plant family Solanaceae. Adults feed on nectar.

Are Manduca pests?

Manduca remained a serious pest for farmers until the 1950’s when DDT was introduced; that pesticide eliminated the insect as a serious pest on any crop. Today, Manduca is still a pest for commercial growers, but it is no longer as damaging as it once was. The use of parasitic wasps as well as the development of insect resistant crops have reduced this species to the status of a minor pest.

Over the past 30 years, Manduca has taken on another role, that of a “model” for studying insect physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology. Its large size and its ease of rearing makes Manduca one of the most studied species of the insect world.