THE LOCUST OF KALISZ? MORE LIKE A DALI-ESQUE DEATHSHEAD!

Close-up of the so-called 'Locust of Kalisz' drawing, contained in the scrapbook album compiled and given by friends to General Joachim Daniel von Jauch as a birthday present sometime during the early 1750s (public domain)

Its many shortcomings and dark aspects notwithstanding, I have long considered the internet to be the greatest cabinet of curiosities ever assembled, a limitless repository replete with wonders and marvels of every conceivable – and inconceivable – kind, all awaiting uncovering and investigation by those with a mind to do so. Over the years, I have documented here on ShukerNature an extremely diverse array of my own cryptozoology-related discoveries made in this manner, of which the present one is just the latest in a very extensive and – at least for me, but I hope for you too – a thoroughly entrancing series with no end in sight, thankfully.

And so it was that while idly browsing last night through the vast virtual art gallery of online images that is freely available via Wikimedia Commons, I typed 'Cryptozoology' in its search engine bar, and instantly called up an entertaining selection of pictures appertaining to mystery beasts. As I browsed through them, I recognised every one with varying degrees of familiarity – until, that is, I came to the extraordinary drawing that opens this current ShukerNature article, and was immediately aware that I had never encountered it before.

As can be seen here, on Wikimedia Commons this drawing has been entitled 'Szarańcza z Kalisza', which translates from Polish as 'Locust of Kalisz', dates from no earlier than 1749, and is accompanied by the following description: 'Zmierzchnica trupia główka ze sztambucha generała Joachima Daniela Jaucha' (very loosely translated via Google Translate as 'the dreaded head of General Joachim Daniel Jauch on paper'). What can this weird insect be, who was Joachim Daniel Jauch, and what is their common history? Needless to say, my sense of cryptozoological curiosity was irresistibly stimulated, and so, in best Sherlockian response, the game was afoot!

The 'Locust of Kalisz' drawing with its bilingual caption inscribed below it - click to enlarge (public domain)

My first line of investigation was to translate the handwritten caption inscribed directly below the drawing itself. It was present in two separate languages, Old Polish and German, but the script was very faint in both, the ink having long since faded considerably. Happily, however, with great thanks to the much-welcomed translation skills of Facebook friend Miroslav Fismeister and one of his friends, Polish novelist Daniel Koziarski, for the Old Polish version and the much-appreciated assistance of German cryptozoological friend and colleague Markus Bühler for the German version, I am able to provide the following English translation:

The year 1749: A plague of locusts fell a mile from Kalisz, of which two were caught, one was held in Gniezno capital and the other in the OO. Reformation church in Kalisz. When taken in the hand, it was screaming like a bat, yellow foam was coming from its mouth, all of it was hairy, Death on the chest, two hairy legs, squirrel's teeth, etc.

Kalisz is a city in central Poland (and the oldest still existing anywhere in this country), and Gniezno is a city in central-western Poland that was this country's first capital city. Moreover, the OO. Reformation church in Kalisz was conceivably a Reformed Franciscan church and is apparently now the Church of the Holy Family there. Sadly, I currently have no information concerning the fate of the two captured specimens – were they preserved and retained somewhere, I wonder, or simply discarded? Hence I am treating this case as an investigation still in progress. However, combining the verbal description's details with the visual details present in the drawing did swiftly enable me to identify the insect. Albeit exhibiting considerable artistic licence and not a little inaccuracy, whereas the drawing clearly does not portray a locust it was evidently inspired by Acherontia atropos – the deathshead hawk moth, one of Europe's largest lepidopterans (click here for a ShukerNature blog article devoted to this morphologically and behaviourally distinctive species).

True, the characteristic thoracic marking resembling a skull and earning this particular moth its familiar English name was depicted ventrally rather than dorsally in this strange drawing, and in it the insect had been given a grinning human face sporting a decidedly Salvador Dali-esque upward-curving moustache, but this latter feature may have been intended as a whimsical adaptation of the moth's long thick antennae. Indeed, in overall appearance the depicted insect definitely seems to constitute a deliberately comical, humanoid caricature of A. atropos, which would explain why it was only given two legs (but ending in claws, like a moth's, rather than human feet), yet incorporating certain unequivocally Acherontian attributes too, such as the banding upon its rear wings, and its hairy body. Of particular relevance here is that the creature's alleged bat-like screaming – ostensibly nonsensical in relation to a moth – is actually a famous, characteristic feature of this particular moth species For it can emit a shrill, high-pitched squeaking sound, which is created by the moth's powerful inhalation of air into its pharynx, causing a stiffened flap called the epipharynx to vibrate very rapidly (click here for more details).

Exquisite 19^th-Century illustration of a deathshead hawk moth (public domain)

But what about the description of the drawing assigned to it on Wikimedia Commons? Clearly "the dreaded head" means "the deathshead", referring to the eponymous moth species, but who was General Joachim Daniel Jauch? I soon discovered that he was General Joachim Daniel von Jauch (1688-1754), a German-born architect, civilian engineer, and military man, who had supervised the Baroque development of Warsaw, being responsible for the urban planning and designing or rebuilding of many of its new buildings, and he had also served in the Polish army as an artilleryman, steadily rising up through the ranks. But how was Jauch linked to the humanoid deathshead hawk moth drawing?

In spite of its very striking, memorable appearance, this enigmatic illustration conjured forth a surprisingly scant amount of information when utilising it as the focus of a Google Image-based internet search. However, I am nothing if not persistent (i.e. stubborn!), so eventually I unearthed sufficient details to flesh out its hitherto-opaque history. The drawing originated in a scrapbook-like album filled with all manner of artwork, which was seemingly compiled by some of Jauch's friends as a birthday present for him and presented to him during the early 1750s (precise year not known), i.e. not long before his death.

Containing over 150 exquisite drawings and other art, variously executed in pen-ink, sepia-ink, crayon, pencil, watercolour, and gouache, this unique and very beautiful leather-covered album can be viewed directly online at the website of the National Digital Library of Poland (Biblioteki Cyfrowej Polona), and the humanoid moth (aka Locust of Kalisz) with its accompanying handwritten bilingual caption can be found on p. 95 (click here to view this page and to access the entire album). The album's diverse artwork includes various architectural designs, sketches and graphics, scenes from mythology, antique sculpture studies, natural history illustrations, and portraits.

Page 95 from Jauch's album, showing the 'humanoid moth' (aka Locust of Kalisz) drawing in situ (public domain)

I also discovered a concise, excellent online article in Polish concerning this drawing (click here), in relation to which Google Translate once again came to my rescue by yielding a workable English version. Dated 11 March 2014, the article was written by Łukasz Kozak, an expert in relation to medieval times and editor at the National Digital Library of Poland, and had been posted on the latter's website. In it, he confirmed that the insect was indeed intended to be a deathshead hawk moth, and documented what I too have written about elsewhere regarding this species' unusual squeaking ability. However, he also provided some very welcome additional information concerning the background history of this intriguing case, including the following details.

As noted earlier, the album is filled with many images, which include numerous full-colour illustrations of plants and animals (such as rodents, birds, reptiles, and insects) that are generally portrayed in a very accurate, naturalistic manner. The artist responsible for these latter illustrations is believed to have been Fraulein de Naumann, as Łukasz had revealed during his own investigation of the moth drawing. She was probably the daughter of architect Johann Christoph von Naumann, who in turn was not only Jauch's predecessor at the architect office where he had worked but also his brother-in-law. Łukasz then went on to reveal the deathshead hawk moth as the species upon which the drawing had been based, and gave some interesting examples from fact and fiction previously unknown to me regarding how the eerie nature of its squeaking had terrified persons in the past who were unfamiliar with this osensibly unnatural ability, thus filling them with superstitious dread.

Łukasz also appears in a short online video in which he looks through Jauch's album, displays the moth drawing, and then discusses it. This video is embedded in an article written by him and first posted on the Newsweek Polska website on 11 February 2015, but unfortunately as he speaks only in Polish I was initially unable to obtain any information from it (click here to access the article and view the video). Happily, however, Katarzyna Bylok, the Polish girlfriend of fellow Fortean/mystery beast investigator Matt Cook, kindly viewed it for me earlier this evening, and the details concerning it that she passed onto me afterwards via Matt confirm that Łukasz was merely reiterating the details that he had previously presented in his March 2014 article. Many thanks indeed to Katarzyna and Matt for kindly assisting me regarding this.

Still of Łukasz Kozak from Newsweek Polska video (© Łukasz Kozak/Newsweek Polska – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational purposes only)

However, there are certain key issues related to this memorable drawing that remain unresolved - or do they?

Notable among these is why Fraulein de Naumann prepared such a surreal, unrealistic image anyway, bearing in mind that all of her other illustrations in the album were so life-like. Might it have been a humorous caricature of Jauch himself?

The following painting of Jauch was prepared in c.1720, and he is not portrayed in it with a moustache of any kind, but perhaps he grew and maintained one in later years?

General Joachim Daniel von Jauch, painted in c.1720, artist unknown (public domain)

Alternatively, could it have even been a comical representation of her own father, as she would have known that he and Jauch had worked in the same office? Or perhaps it was not based upon a real person at all, but was just a light-hearted doodle created in jest to add some merriment to the album, bearing in mind that it had been created specifically as a birthday present for him?

Yet another theory that has been suggested by some writers online, including biologist Prof. Stanislaw Czachorowski in an article of 9 February 2014 dealing with the deathshead hawk moth (click here), and which would certainly explain why it differed so dramatically from the other wildlife illustrations, is also worth considering. Namely, that this drawing was in fact produced by Jauch himself, and was based not upon any sightings of his own but only upon secondhand descriptions or lurid folkloric accounts of the deathshead hawk moth (another reason for its stark inaccuracy), which he interpolated in a blank space on p. 95 of his album alongside the realistic illustrations of Fraulein de Naumann.

As for this drawing's comparably mystifying caption, what are the 'squirrel teeth' referred to in it when describing the moth, and what is the yellow foam seemingly regurgitated by the moth? The caterpillar of the deathshead hawk moth has sizeable mandibles that it will click together and even use to bite aggressors, so these could conceivably be likened to squirrel teeth; but the adult moth only has a slender nectar-imbibing proboscis. Might the phrase instead be a somewhat peculiar allusion to the moth's antennae? In fact, having viewed the following excellent close-up photograph of a deathshead hawk moth's face, the answer now seems clear to me. The 'squirrel teeth' are simply the two ridged, outer edges of the moth's proboscis, which do superficially resemble curved rodent teeth.

Face of a deathshead hawk moth, showing its ridge-edged proboscis (© owner presently unknown to me - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use educational basis only)

It is well known that the caterpillars of hawk moths will regurgitate the sticky (and sometimes toxic) content of their foregut if attacked; but because the mouthparts of caterpillars are very different from those of adult moths, could the latter accomplish such behaviour? Nevertheless, I do recall reading somewhere that certain adult moths will indeed perform this activity as a defence mechanism if need be, so perhaps the deathshead hawk moth is one such species.

Then again, if the drawing itself was intended only as a joke, a spoof, not as a realistic depiction of anything that may truly have appeared near Kalisz in 1749 (and in view of the moth's grinning moustachioed face, this seems ever more likely the more I reflect upon it), maybe the caption was composed in an equally tongue-in-cheek manner and should therefore be taken no more seriously than the drawing.

Equally mystifying is why the insect in the drawing was referred to as a locust, given that it looked nothing like one and was indisputably inspired by a deathshead hawk moth. However, the implication from the drawing's caption is that in 1749 a sizeable number of such insects appeared near Kalisz, and other Polish accounts concerning this incident that I have read online support that implication. Hence it seems plausible that the term 'locust' was being applied not literally but figuratively, an allusion to the large numbers of this insect that had appeared near the city that year.

A 19^th-Century illustration of locusts (public domain)

Even so, this is still odd, because although I have read occasional accounts of veritable swarms of certain hawk moth species occurring in various localities down through the ages, I haven't read anything comparable relating specifically to the deathshead hawk moth. Having said that: in my ShukerNature article on this species (click here), I do refer to a singular incident in which approximately 300 specimens were attracted to a single beehive within a short period of time. The reason for this was that the deathshead has a great liking for honey, so much so in fact that some researchers have even suggested that its uncanny squeaking ability may actually be an attempt to impersonate the specific sound that a queen bee produces to keep her workers passive, and thence allow the moth to enter the hive and consume its honey without being attacked by the hive's worker bees. Consequently, in exceptional circumstances large numbers of deathsheads may indeed occur. So although I haven't been able as yet to trace any corroboration that is independent of the moth drawing, perhaps one such occurrence took place near Kalisz, Poland, during 1749.

Clearly there is still much to uncover regarding this fascinating case, but what I have provided here so far would already appear to be the most detailed account of it ever presented in English. So, now that its curious story is readily accessible to a much greater audience than before, perhaps additional details will be forthcoming from readers, to plug the gaps remaining in its history. Consequently, as I noted earlier here, I consider this article and investigation of mine to be a work in progress, so I would be extremely grateful to receive any supplementary information relating to it. And as is always true with my researches, all such submissions will be fully credited by me if utilised in updates to this article.

Incidentally, there is actually a Facebook page, in Polish, devoted to the humanoid moth drawing from Jauch's album – entitled 'Szarańcza z Kalisza', it contains various relevant posts and comments, plus a delightful animated GIF of this drawing, created by Mieszko Saktura. Click here to visit and Like its page (I have).

Polish postage stamp depicting the deathshead hawk moth (public domain)

And finally: for another ShukerNature blog article concerning an equally bizarre illustration of an alleged locust that clearly was nothing of the kind, be sure to click here and read all about the extraordinary locust dragon of Nicolaes de Bruyn from 1594.

The original, truly bizarre 1594 illustration by Nicolaes de Bruyn of an apparent locust dragon (public domain)

AT THE SIGN OF THE DEATHSHEAD

19th-Century colour engraving of the deathshead hawk moth


"On the 4th of September [1883] one of these insects flew into a house near the Brunswick Brewery, Leeds. There was a sick child in the house at the time, and the mother, terrified at what she thought an evil omen, could not be pacified for some time. The insect was secured and taken to Wardman's, the bird-stuffer's."

John Grassham - The Naturalist's World (January 1884)


Acherontia atropos, the insect referred to above, is nothing if not distinctive in appearance. A rare migrant to the UK, with a wingspan that can exceed 5.5 in and a weight that can fall little short of 0.1 oz, it is incontestably Britain's largest species of moth. Its plum-coloured, wavy-lined forewings and rich golden-yellow hindwings, not to mention its bulky body striped boldly underneath in dark brown and primrose bands, also render it one of this country's most attractive moths. Nevertheless, all of these features are eclipsed by a single, but very singular, additional characteristic - one which instantly identities this species and distinguishes it from all others in Britain, which has woven around it a near-indestructible web of folklore and fear, and which has earned it its extremely sinister-sounding English name.

Pinned specimen of the deathshead hawk moth (Ivo Antušek/www.biolib.cz)

This feature is a strange marking on top of its thorax's front portion, which, by a grotesque quirk of nature, forms a surprisingly realistic image of a human skull, ghostly white in colour with black, empty eyesockets. Enhancing this macabre image, the thoracic hairs bearing it are erectile, so that when they are raised up and down while the moth is resting, the 'skull' appears to be nodding!

To many superstition-ridden people in the past (and even to some today) this bizarre insignia is considered to be nothing less than the symbol of Death itself, so that A. atropos is commonly referred to as the deathshead, or deathshead hawk moth in full.

Close-up of a pinned deathshead hawk moth, showing its skull simulacrum

As can be imagined, its uncanny skull simulacrum has burdened this perfectly innocent insect with a fearful but wholly undeserved reputation as a harbinger of death, doom, and disaster, and has spawned a rich if ridiculous wealth of fanciful rural beliefs and old wives' tales. For example, on occasions when specimens have been observed in a given region just prior to an outbreak of an epidemic disease, the moths have been automatically blamed, and labelled as the messengers of impending mourning. Indeed, many people blamed the entire French Revolution upon the appearance of an unusual number of deathshead moths shortly before its commencement. Moreover, this insect is said in some localities to be in league with witches and to murmur into their ears the names of persons soon to be visited by Death. In central France, it is widely believed that blindness will result if dust particles falling from the wings of a deathshead in flight happen to land in the eyes of anyone watching it...and so on, and so forth.

Spectacular tattoo of a deathshead hawk moth (Matt Gardiner/Flickr)

If these tales were treated lightly, with the humour and contempt that their imaginative but baseless claims deserve, they would constitute nothing more than intriguing yet harmless additions to the annals of modern-day folklore. Tragically, however, for a very long time they have been accepted as truth so wholeheartedly by the credulous and ingenuous that this magnificent moth has been subjected to extensive, barbaric persecution - as revealed graphically by Rev. J.G. Wood's account in his Illustrated Natural History of an all too typical incident that he witnessed during the mid-19th Century:

"I once saw a whole congregation checked while coming out of church, and assembled in a wide and terrified circle around a poor Death's-head Moth that was quietly making its way across the churchyard-walk. No one dared to approach the terrible being, until at last the village blacksmith took heart of grace, and with a long jump, leaped upon the moth, and crushed it beneath his hobnailed feet. I keep the flattened insect in my cabinet, as an example of popular ignorance, and the destructive nature with which such ignorance is always accompanied."

Yet ironically, and despite its eerie thoracic emblem, this much-maligned species was not always so intimately associated in the human mind with death and ill-fortune. Its first English name, apparently given to it in 1773 by nature writer Wilkes, was much more pleasant-sounding - the jasmine hawk moth, after a favoured food-plant of its caterpillar. In 1775, Moses Harris renamed it the bee tyger hawk moth, because of its brown and yellow stripes. 1f only he had been content with this. Sadly, however, in 1778 he changed its name again, this time to the deathshead, which, to its great cost, it has retained ever since. Its scientific name is no less ominous either. Acherontia is derived from Acheron, a river in the underworld of Greek mythology; and Atropos, eldest of the Fates or Moirae, was the black-veiled goddess responsible for cutting every mortal's Thread of Life.

Deathshead hawk moth with wings closed

Acherontia atropos has two close relatives that share its deathhead motif and also have equally doomladen names. Acherontia lachesis (inhabiting the Orient and also the Hawaiian Islands) is named after another of the three Fates, this time Lachesis, who measures out every’s mortal’s Thread of Life, thereby allotting the length of their life.

Acherontia lachesis (Umeshsrinivasan/Wikipedia)

And Acherontia styx (native to the Middle East and eastern Asia) is named after the river of death encircling the Greek underworld.

Acherontia styx

The tenacity of the deathshead’s fallacious notoriety as a winged memento mori has even attracted the attention of the entertainment world. In 1967, Tigon Productions released a UK horror movie entitled 'The Blood Beast Terror', which starred Peter Cushing among others, and concerned a Frankensteinian entomologist of the Victorian era who creates two humans with the ability to transform themselves into giant deathshead moths!

'The Blood Beast Terror' on video (Cobra Video)

This species is also associated with Salvador Dali’s macabre surrealist film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929). And it appears on the cover of Thomas Harris’s chilling novel The Silence of the Lambs (1988), as well as in the official theatrical release posters for the 1991 film adaptation starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.

'The Silence of the Lambs' movie poster (Orion Films)

Only a fairly rare spring and summer visitor to Britain, the deathshead A. atropos occurs as a breeding species throughout North Africa and the Middle East and northwards to the Mediterranean. It is resident in parts of southern Europe, and migrates throughout Europe - but cases of breeding have been reported on occasion from Britain, with discoveries of caterpillars in several southern counties. Up to 5 in long, and of robust girth, the impressive-looking deathshead caterpillar varies from several shades of green to lemon, dark brown, or even purple, and is embellished on each flank by seven mauve or azure chevrons, edged decorously with bright yellow or cream. This bold but beautiful colour scheme is topped off with a hazy sprinkling of deep violet or sparkling white dots, and as a final flourish its body's rear end bears a striking curved horn.

Caterpillar of the deathshead hawk moth (Jean Pierre Hamon/Wikipedia)

Pupation takes place underground, the caterpillar digging its way 2-4 in beneath the soil surface and transforming after about a fortnight into a hard, brown, somewhat shiny chrysalis, surrounded by its cocoon of soil, whose function seems to be to maintain the correct degree of humidity around the chrysalis for its successful metamorphosis.

Pupa of the deathshead hawk moth (Walter Schön/Wikipedia)

By late September or early October, metamorphosis is generally complete and the adult moth emerges. Sometimes two generations occur in the same year; the second emerges during November.

Deathshead hawk moth, 19th-Century German print

Whereas the caterpillar thrives upon leaves (especially from the potato), the moth is a fruit-eater primarily - but not exclusively, as beekeepers will verify. Unlike the long slender proboscis ('tongue') of so many other hawk moths, perfectly designed for probing flowers in search of nectar, the deathshead's is much shorter and stouter, adapted instead for piercing the tough outer skin of fruit to obtain their succulent juices. However, it is also well-suited for puncturing the honey-containing cells in beehives, which has enabled the deathshead to expand its dietary scope, and explains why this attractive species is frequently discovered inside hives (as are A. lachesis and A. styx). This is exemplified by a startling discovery made in 1901 by the curator of a marine biology station's museum at Rovigno, Istria. As documented by Alfred Bunbury (The Field, 7 December 1901):

"On the second floor of a house next to this zoological museum is a window whose wooden persienne have for a long time been closed. Though the shutters have been shut, the old wood was full of chinks, and Dr Hermes, the curator of the museum, noticed that a swarm of bees had utilised the space between the window and the shutters for a hive. Curious to see the work of the bees, on Oct. 1 he climbed up to the window, and was astonished to find it covered with death's head moths (Acherontia atropos). The moths, which are extremely fond of honey, had either failed to find their way out of the chinks through which they had entered, or, having fed too heavily on the food, had become dazed in the semi-dark light of the window. Dr Hermes and an assistant made their way into the room by another entrance, and removed a lower pane of the window. Quantities of moths were found hanging on the walls and others on the floor. Many that were dead had evidently been killed by the bees, which had got in under their wings, and those that were still alive were badly mutilated. More than one hundred large specimens were taken that day, and though every day five or six more were found in the same way, by Oct. 13, on which day Dr Hermes was summoned to Berlin, he thought that he had freed the last prisoner. But a few days ago a telegram informed him that 154 moths had again fallen a prey to the bees."

Its liking for honey also appears to explain a characteristic of the deathshead that is every bit as uncanny and superficially unnatural as its thoracic skull sign - namely, it has the highly unexpected and singularly unmoth-like ability to squeak!

Click here to view a photograph of a deathshead hawk moth feeding upon honey inside a honeybee hive (ARKive)

Records of this odd behavioural trait date back at least as far as the 1700s, and its physiological basis has incited much speculation. Some researchers assumed that the squeak was created by friction of the moth's abdomen against its thorax at the junction of these two body portions. Certain others suggested that it occurred if the moth's palps (accessory mouthparts) grated upon its proboscis. It is now known to result from the moth's inhalation of air into its pharynx, causing a stiffened flap (the epipharynx) to vibrate very rapidly.

In their Illustrated Encyclopedia of Beekeeping (1985), Roger Morse and Ted Hooper report that the epipharynx's oscillation yields a pulsed sound of approximately 280 pulses per second for a period of about 80 milliseconds (80 thousandths of one second), followed by a brief pause of 20 milliseconds before the epipharynx is held upwards, enabling the air to be blown out - creating the moth's famous squeak. Lasting a mere 40 milliseconds, it is a very high-pitched sound of about 6 kHz - above the audible range of many humans, though children and acute-eared adults can usually hear it. The moth will perform up to six of these 'squeak-cycles' in as little as one second, but the squeak shortens as the moth tires.

Naturally, there has been much debate about the precise purpose of the deathshead's squeaking. It is certainly a deliberate action, as the moth raises its body when doing so, which enables the sound to be carried to the bees through the air. And as the bees often react by permitting it to enter the hive unmolested (though its tough cuticle is sufficient to withstand occasional stings imparted by any less trusting hive workers, and it is in any case resistant to the venom imparted by such stings), it would seem that its squeaking serves as an effective password. Indeed, some researchers even assert that the moth's squeak is sufficiently similar to the sound made by the hive's queen bee to fool the workers into believing that their queen is instructing them to remain passive. According to this idea, therefore, the deathshead's squeaking is not so much a password as an inspired voice impression!

Deathshead hawk moth, colour engraving from 1840

Moreover, as revealed by R.F.A. Moritz and colleagues, this extraordinary moth is even able to mimic the scent of the honey bees’ cutaneous fatty acids, thus rendering it chemically invisible to them, and so further enabling it to move about freely inside their hives (Naturwissenschaften, vol. 78, 1991).

Intriguingly, writer and photographer Des Bartlett has discovered that in Kenya the presence of deathshead moths inside the beehives comes as a great shock to many of the native Kikuyu people, who seem convinced that they must be some form of wonderful super-queen bee (Animals, 30 July 1963). Also, their unexpected squeaking has been looked upon by all too many Westerners as something ominous or even preternatural - no doubt inspiring the earlier-mentioned myth that this species whispers into the ears of witches.

Polish postage stamp portraying the deathshead hawk moth

All of which brings us back to the subject of superstition, whose anachronistic, irrational utterings of ignorance and fear are still inciting mindless acts of vengeance and violence against this very elegant, showy, and thoroughly harmless insect. Even though we have entered the ultra-scientific 21st Century, there are still people who will not hesitate to kill any deathshead hawk moth that they encounter, atavistically recalling foolish fancies from the centuries of the past.

What can we say to such people? Ironically, the best reply is one that was published almost 150 years ago, but which is still as appropriate today as it was then. To quote from Louis Figuier's The Insect World (1872):

"In spite of its ominous livery, the Atropos does not come from Hades; it is no envoy of death, bringing sadness and mourning. It does not bring us news of another world; it tells us, on the contrary, that Nature can people every hour; that it was her will to console them for their sadness, to grant to the twilight and to the night the same winged wanderers which are at once the delight and ornament of the hours of light and of day. This is the mission of science, to dissipate the thousands of prejudices and dangerous superstitions which mislead ignorant people."

I pray that its mission will succeed, to ensure the survival of the deathshead hawk moth and every other animal currently endangered by the baneful influence of fatuous notions that should have been buried by rationality and compassion a very long time ago.

19th-Century engraving of the deathshead hawk moth

This ShukerNature blog post is excerpted from my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2007)