Environmental and Cultural History of the Death's Head Hawkmoth

Abstract

Acherontia atropos is a large, migratory sphingid moth that has played a significant symbolic role in literature and the arts in Europe since the eighteenth, and particularly the nineteenth, century. Its appearance north of the Alps is comparatively well documented for the fears and superstitions attached to this species. The fact that the cultural record of Acherontia atropos sets in rather suddenly in the early eighteenth century suggest that the species was previously too rarely seen to leave a major footprint in human culture. It is suggested that the occurrence of this striking moth was dramatically increased by the introduction of potatoes as a food plant. It is therefore suggested here that the cultural history of Acherontia atropos presents a case in which environmental change due to a new crop also leads to a cultural change in the example of a new iconic animal symbol emerging in the arts.