Raleigh, N.C. – Federal agents ensured the safety of tomatoes, potatoes and honeybees by seizing a half-dozen pubescent moths named for death.
Customs officers at Raleigh- Durham International Airport took the pupae of the rare moth, called the death’s head hawk, from the luggage of two people arriving from England.
The passengers said they were bringing the insects so their son could raise them. But the death’s head hawk, large in wingspan and freakish in coloration, is unwanted in the United States. Its larvae prey upon plants in the potato family. Its adults sneak into beehives and feast, unnoticed, on honey.
The six pupae – akin to a butterfly’s chrysalis – were seized Nov. 4. They are the first death’s head hawks known to be intercepted in the United States.
“They’re capable of movement. That’s what tipped off the officer,” said Glenn Landau, an entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture who identified the pupae after their seizure.
The pupae have been destroyed, dunked first in scalding water, then in alcohol.
The death’s head hawk moth (Acherontia atropos) has notoriety among bug fans because of the yellow, skull-like pattern on its thorax.
The moths are found naturally in Africa, Asia and parts of Europe – but not in the United States.
If they got a foothold here, they could wreak havoc on potato, tomato and, possibly, tobacco plants, said Tony Pittaway, a database specialist for CAB International, an agriculture think tank in the United Kingdom. He is a specialist on the family of moths that includes the death’s head hawks.
They could be devastating, he said, in states such as Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Like other moths, the death’s head hawk starts as an egg. Its bright yellow larva, the caterpillar, can grow up to 6 inches long and become as thick as a man’s thumb.
The moth winters as a pupa before emerging as an adult moth, among the largest in its group, with a wingspan of up to 5 inches.
Death’s head hawk moths are traded on websites in the United Kingdom, where enthusiasts swap advice on how to raise them. On one site, half a dozen pupae can be bought for 15 British pounds (about $25). A dead, pinned adult moth recently sold on eBay for the equivalent of $12.
