Silence of the Lambs and Out of Africa?

At the end of my penultimate update  I posed a question about the identity of the eggs in my photographs. This latest update will deal with one of those photos; why just one? Well because, as I write, nothing has yet emerged from the eggs in the second photograph, that will have to wait a little longer.

This then is the story of the little cluster of pale eggs in the second photo, that looked like this:

I would be surprised if anyone has been able to guess the identity of these as they are in fact a migrant species and can also be found throughout tropical Africa. 

The death's head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos) is one of the UK's largest moths. The life-cycle has 4 stages: Egg, larva, pupa and adult. The eggs are pictured above and the first instar larvae look like this...

As they increase in size, they become greener...

The caterpillars are not very active and seem to move only when they need to get to another leaf, having eaten the one they are on. In the 2nd instar stage, the horn begins to shorten and turn yellow.  The body and horn become covered in minute pale tubercles...

By the time of the 3rd instar, the 7 lateral stripes are fully developed and are blue edged with white. The tubercles are now enlarged. This is a typical pose for the early instars, along the vein, underneath a leaf. As they grow they become too large to do this and have to rest on a leaf stalk or branch.

Here's a short video of one feeding (the usual reminder about needing to view directly from my blog to see videos, the e.mailed version won't show)...

Instar 4 sees the yellow tone becoming more vivid and the horn recurves further...

The 5th instar is the final one before pupating-here's a freshly moulted one...

Now the tubercles are lost apart from the horn, which is strongly recurved. The blue edge of the lateral stripes becomes more extensive forming a series of broad, V'shaped bands along the back...

The final instar larvae are huge; I measured one at 100mm and it was still growing. They consume an enormous amount of the food-plant (in this case privet) at this stage as well.

When they are fully grown they darken a little and begin to cover themselves with a saliva-like secretion just prior to pupating. The next video shows this but I've increased the speed to keep the size reasonable for the blog...and your patience...

It then wanders away from the food-plant and pupates by burrowing into the soil...

The video above actually show the largest of the larvae I have, starting the pupating process. I originally had 15 eggs, from which only 4 larvae emerged. I'm not sure if this is normal but somebody else did tell me that they had 15 also and only had 5 larvae. Right from the start I have been amazed at how the growth rate has differed. These all emerged the same day and withing a fairly short space of time and yet.....well here's a photo that demonstrates the differences...

The larger of the two here appears to be two instars ahead of the smaller one. And so now I have three more yet to pupate and I am wondering if they will then over-winter before the moths emerge. My friend Su Reed who also had some of these said that hers emerged after around 4-5 weeks but I guess it may be getting too late in the year for mine. Either way, that will be quite an exciting time as the moths are huge and squeak!

It would be remiss of me when talking about these mystical moths to not mention that iconic film poster. As any film buff will gladly tell you (something I am not by the way) the poster shows Jodi Foster's face with a large moth placed over her mouth. That film being of course, 'Silence of the Lambs'. This is supposedly the 'Death's head' moth from the film...

But if you take a closer look at the ambiguous skull in the image, you'll find it has been manipulated and actually comprises seven, female naked bodies....

The image originated in a photographic portrait of the artist Salvador Dali and this photo itself was inspired by surrealist Dali's gouache 'Female bodies as a skull' painting.

The true 'skull' on the moth should look more like this...

That then is the story to date and I will be watching for any moths that might emerge later in the year, failing that, next spring. Whenever it is, there will be images here for sure.

That's about all for this update, I hope to have news of the other eggs sometimes very soon, until the next time...