Confusing predators with reflected or refracted sunlight

Imagine a large butterfly- or moth-like creature, with a wingspan of about one meter (it's moth-like, not actually related to Earth insects). It lives its entire life high in the open sky, never touching (or even approaching) the ground. Additionally, as a consequence of this world's broader cosmology, it is always daytime this far out in open sky, so the moth has nowhere and no time to hide.

There are predators out there, so the moth needs some sort of defense mechanism. Poison might work well, but seems rather boring. Instead, I'd like the moth to take advantage of the ever-present intense sunlight to blind and confuse its would-be predators.

By using its large, (translucent?), finely-scaled wings, the moth can project sunlight via either reflection or refraction precisely into its attacker's eyes, causing disorienting effects that give it time to escape (probably by plummeting straight downwards, which is most species' fastest route of exit in open sky).

At its most basic, the moth would simply blind attackers with highly-focused light. But I'm wondering if more advanced behaviour is able to deal with predators evolving resistant retinas or reflexive third eyelids.

Would it be possible for the moth to be able to manipulate light, either through reflection or refraction, with enough precision to project illusory duplicates of itself into its predators eyes, thus giving them a moment of confusion in which to escape?

At the next level, could the moth project actual holographic duplicates of itself into space, thus creating a 50% chance of predators chasing the duplicates instead?

How realistic is this idea?

posted over 7 years ago

ApproachingDarknessFish‭

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