Culture
The skull pattern and its fanciful associations with the supernatural and evil have fostered superstitious fears of Acherontia species, particularly Acherontia atropos, perhaps because it is the most widely known. The moths' sharp, mouse-like squeaking intensify the effect. Nor is this a new attitude: in the mid 19th century Edward Newman, having earlier mentioned the mark on the thorax wrote: "However, let the cause of the noise be what it may, the effect is to produce the most superstitious feelings among the uneducated, by whom it is always regarded with feelings of awe and terror."
These moths have been prominently featured in art such as German artist Sulamith Wülfing, and movies such as Un Chien Andalou (by Buñuel and Dalí) and The Silence of the Lambs, and in the artwork of the Japanese metal band Sigh's Hail Horror Hail album. They are also mentioned in Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker's Dracula, where Dracula has been sending moths for Renfield to consume. Traditional legend used to hold that the species was first seen in Britain on the execution of Charles I, but it is more likely to have simply become more common by that time, having arrived with the first transportation of potatoes some centuries earlier. Though rarer, it is still occasionally sighted in the country to this day.
Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Sphinx describes a close encounter with a death's-headed sphinx moth, describing it as “the genus Sphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order Lepidoptera.”
The species names atropos, styx and lachesis are all related to death. The first refers to the member of the three Moirai who cuts the threads of life of all beings in Greek mythology; the second to the river of the dead, also in Greek mythology; and the last refers to the Moira who allots the correct amount of life to a being. In addition the genus name Acherontia is derived from Acheron, a river in Greece that was believed in Greek Mythology to be a branch of the river Styx. A picture of the adult Hawkmoth was featured on the cover of the movie "Silence of The Lambs".
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Acherontia atropos - MHNT
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Acherontia styx
Read more about this topic: Death's-head Hawkmoth
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