Moth Sex Pheromones: An Evolutionary Perspective

The greater peacock moths cross hills and valleys in the darkness, with a heavy flight of wings spotted with inexplicable hieroglyphics. They hasten from the remotest depths of the horizon to find their 'sleeping beauties,' drawn thereto by unknown odours, inappreciable by our senses, yet so penetrating that the branch of almond on which the female has perched, and which she has impregnated with her effluvium, exerts the same extraordinary attraction (J. H. C. Fabre in Legros 1971: 131). In the obscurity of a dark chamber this splendid moth emits phantasmal radiations, perhaps intermittent and reserved for the season of nuptials, signals invisible to us, and perceptible only to those children of the night, who may have found this means to communicate one with another, to call one in the darkness, and to speak with one another (J. H. C. Fabre in Legros 1971: 309).