proboscis

The hummingbird hawk moth, known for its furry grey body, orange hindwings and long proboscis, migrates to the UK from southern Europe and north Africa in the summer months.

From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026

She introduces us to the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, an organization whose remit is to raise awareness and support for creatures such as the proboscis monkey and the blobfish.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026

Snuffle and let that sense of curiosity and discovery waft pleasingly over your proboscis.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 6, 2025

When a mosquito bites you, it pierces the skin using a mouthpart called a proboscis to suck up blood.

From Seattle Times ● May 25, 2024

The proboscis of the death’s-head hawk moth is used as a kind of reed instrument, blown through to make high-pitched, reedy notes.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas

As we’ll see, and as is obvious if you look at the proboscides of extant mammals, there’s a lot more to having a trunk that having large, dorsally located nostrils.

From Scientific American ● Nov. 20, 2012

Mammals with proboscides or inferred proboscides – I’m thinking tapirs, pyrotheres, astrapotheres, the stem-whale Makaracetus, some amynodontid rhinos, some oreodonts, Macrauchenia, dik-diks, saigas, desmans, sengis and so on – have narrow snouts.

From Scientific American ● Nov. 20, 2012

Again, this seems incompatible with the presence of a trunk, as if sauropods had proboscides, wouldn’t they be grabbing foliage with the trunk tip, and then passing it into the mouth, over the teeth?

From Scientific American ● Nov. 20, 2012

Naturally there will be mercantile proboscides dipping here and there, gleaning a little honey for the sweetening of the pots.

From Time Magazine Archive

Their habit is to attach themselves to the skin by plunging their proboscides into it, and then suck the blood until their flat bodies are distended into a globular form.

From The Naturalist on the River Amazons by Henry Walter Bates

"During our nighttime scuba dives, we searched for the ribbon-like proboscises of Bonellia sp aff minor extending out from burrow entrances," says lead author Ryutaro Goto at KyotoU's Field Science Education and Research Center.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 18, 2023

The Malagasy moths take the prize here, with proboscises that measure 6.6 centimeters longer on average, as seen in the picture above.

From Science Magazine ● Oct. 1, 2021

The insects bite into leaves with their mandibles and proboscises to induce flowering up to one month earlier than normal.

From Nature ● May 21, 2020

The bees soon cut several holes in the leaves of each plant using their mandibles and proboscises.

From Scientific American ● May 21, 2020

Rather, his lips had elongated into long sucking proboscises, while already a third pair of limbs had commenced growing from his furred-over abdomen.

From G-r-r-r...! by Robert Donald Locke