Male moths and butterflies often fire blanks but nobody knows why

A few days ago I tweeted about a famous picture of a moth, the Death’s Head Hawk-moth used in the artwork surrounding the 1991 psychological thriller “The Silence of the Lambs”. At first glance, the moth looks genuine, but closer inspection reveals that what is thought of as markings resembling a skull on the moth’s thorax is, in the movie illustration, actually an imprint of a well-known 1951 creation of Salvador Dali and photographer Philippe Halsman. In that image, In Voluptas Mors, a group of naked women were posed in such a way as to create the illusion of a skull. Of course, this morbid allusion fits perfectly with the theme of a murderer who skins his female victims in the movie. The women are lambs to the slaughter, their fleeces flayed from their bodies by the serial killer and a symbolic moth placed on their tongues to silence them forever. Although a representation of the Death’s Head Hawk-moth (Acherontia atropos) features in the promotional materials for the film. Fellow science writer Rowan Hooper reminded me that in the movie itself, it is the pupae of a different moth, the Carolina Sphinx Moth (also known as the Tobacco Hawk-moth (Manduca sexta) that feature in the plot. In our chat, I mentioned that I wasn’t particularly interested in moths when that movie was first on release, but he said he was very much interested in Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) at the time, Indeed, Hooper was specifically working in research try...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Lepidoptera Source Type: blogs