Usually I come across horrible entomology articles regularly enough that I save a backlog for future series. This hasn’t been the case over the last few weeks, I haven’t come across the normal array of terrible media crud. Maybe I just get jaded and stop looking as carefully – but this week I even came across a moth related correction from the Maui News. They fixed their error, but must have deleted the original article…
And for this week I found makala hii with the image below. Should be pretty easy to spot the weirdness (they do at least manage to point out that the moth is sivyo the LBAM (light brown apple moth)).
That is /not/ what a death’s head hawkmoth pronotum looks like! I think it’s a clipping from the Silence of the Lambs movie poster.
~Kai
Kai’s got it…it IS from the movie poster, lol!
Movie posters aside, death’s heads aren’t found on this side of the world. Au, are they? I bet Jerry rues the day he reported his little LBAM find from his backyard. I know a couple organic farmer friends in Santa Cruz county who still curse his name, when they should be cursing Kawamura. For a couple months in 2008 we had airplanes spraying all night long, even though we’re supposedly within the boundaries of a national marine sanctuary. I love the title of the article.
Yup, it is the poster! And if you actually look close enough the “skull” is a famous Dali photograph of nude women (yes some artistic nudity – nsfw?) ((depends on your work)).
The deaths head hawkmoth is not found in the US, it’s pretty restricted to southern Europe and Northern Africa.
I don’t think Jerry regrets reporting that moth, the damage that it is capable of could cost farmers tens of millions. A lot of people cause a ruckus over nothing about the spraying…but if we let it go unchecked the ecological damage from the pest could be far worse.
Who knew death’s heads were terrorists with WMDs? I found this while searching for something totally unrelated: http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/archives/2005_press_releases/112005/11182005.xml Figured it’d give you a good laugh. Shangwe!