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Death's-head hawkmoth — printable fact sheet
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Death's-head hawkmoth
Acherontia atropos
Acherontia atropos wears a pattern on its thorax that a human brain immediately reads as a skull, and it is one of very few insects that can produce a loud audible squeak. The sound is not made by rubbing body parts together like a cricket; the moth draws air in through its shor…
Did you know?
- The Death's-head hawkmoth has been featured in popular culture, most notably in the film 'The Silence of the Lambs,' where it became an iconic symbol.
- The moth's squeak is loud enough to hear across a room, and there is credible evidence it mimics the piping sound a queen bee makes, which may briefly freeze worker bees. Beekeepers historically regarded a death's-head in the hive as an omen, and the moth appears in European folklore as a herald of death — a reputation earned by the skull mark rather than by anything it does. It cannot feed at flowers the way other hawkmoths do, so a stolen hive is genuinely one of the few energy sources available to it. Three species share the skull marking across Africa, Europe and Asia; the film poster imagery that made them famous used a related species.
What I learned
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