Death's Head Hawkmoth Acherontia atropos

The name says it all: this African hawkmoth wears a skull-shaped mark on its thorax that's impossible to miss. When Carl Linnaeus first described it in 1758, he chose an appropriately ominous scientific name referencing the river of death from Greek mythology.

It's the most widely recognized of its genus, largely because that macabre skull marking has spooked and fascinated humans for centuries. That dark pattern probably helps it blend in during daylight hours, making this harbinger of doom just another moth trying to avoid being spotted.