Rothschildia orizaba Moth

    This is the seventh of a series of illustrations featuring arthropods. I've also produced stickers of this series for trade in Brazil.
The first reason I had to depict these arthropods is the promotion of the rights of sentient animals (animals who are capable to feel and experience negative or positive experiences, and whose organic structure is complex enough to allow a considerable level of self-consciousness). That is, the right to avoid suffering (either caused by humans or not) and to live their lives in peace. Read more at this section of articles by Animal Ethics.

    The individuals from this species of large moth of the Saturniidae family were associated by the pre-hispanic Mexica people with a goddess named Itzpapalotl (from the nahuatl "Clawed Butterfly"). Itzpapalotl is one of the Tzitzimimeh, star demons that according to the Mexica cosmology threatened to come down to earth and devour people during the solar eclipse, or the transition between a "Sun Era" and another. She is also regarded as the ruler of Tamoanchan, a paradise land where the first generation of people in this era, the fifth, may have originated from. These moths can be found throughout most of the South and Central American continents.