Butterflies Behaving Badly?

[Ron Gatrelle]

Original message from: Mary Beth  re: Butterflies Behaving Badly...

snip

> Keep in mind, this is a "contrived environment," so what happens is
> pretty much like humans being incarcerated in a jail (!)

more snips

> Most Leps behave in a "normal" manner (which can be questionable as to
> what IS "normal" behavior).  What I've observed with all the varying
> species present in the constrictions of the tent, is the cross-species
> "interest" in the Queens!
snips
____________

For those who may not know, Mary has been working in a Butterfly House. She
strikes me as a great person and loves all wildlife. Her comments to us on
Leps-l on some of the odd behavior of the confined leps has been very
interesting. Personally, I feel most of it is due to overcrowding and lack
of natural environment.  Now.

I do not consider myself an environmental wacko, but I have come with age
to not appreciate zoos as I once did. They are prisons indeed and while in
many ways the animals therein are "content" they are unarguably
behaviorally altered. Several years ago at the Columbia South Carolina zoo
my family joined a very interested crowd around the bear pen. The lone male
bear was sitting against the wall masturbating. Humans get fascinated by
the strangest things - we moved on.

I have visited two butterfly houses and did not find either interesting at
all. This was undoubtedly due to too many years of seeing them free in the
field. It at times has seemed odd to me that watchers who are opposed to
collecting have no trouble with masses of butterflies being collected like
birds for placement in cages just for the enjoyment of people who mostly
only see butterflies on the bumper of their cars.

If I were a butterfly in a bug zoo I would be carrying around a sign saying
"some fates are worse then death".  There are still white people here in
the South who really think it was a good thing to uproot blacks from Africa
as they were "better off" here. Do we think leps are better off in a bug
zoo? Or, do we just not think?

I am a butterfly collector - I should be expected to have no problem with
incarcerated butterflies, yet I do. The watchers should have a problem with
thousands of butterflies the world over being bought and sold like trinkets
only to die in far away butterfly houses - yet they don't..

There are some who only "collect" butterflies as pretty things to put on
lamp shades, drink coasters, or in plastic cubes. No data, just pretty.
Historical collectors (lepidopterists) would never think of having a
specimen without its full data - where caught, when, and determined. I
believe this is because traditional lepidopterists have a great, and
serious, respect for these wild organisms and collect them mainly to be
able to assess and document their variation and placement in the natural
world - taxonomy. Of course, we find them beautiful - but not as the
trinket collectors do. To the lepidopterist the wingless moth female is as
wonderful as the brightest Morpho. In fact, I think it is fair to say that
_most_ lepidopterists are not interested primarily in all the "showy" stuff
but are most interested in what is in their own back yard, state or
region - regardless of what it looks like.

It is too bad that "butterfly collector" seems to have been translated to
many watchers as equal to "trinket collector".  I don't collect trinkets
and I don't like to see any wildlife treated without dignity and put in a
cage to entertain humans - even if they are just bugs.

Finally,  I too have some of those exotics in the collection here. But even
with these they needed to have full and accurate data before I would
purchase them. I am also not saying I would never again visit a Butterfly
House. This is an editorial with idealistic tones. Its purpose is to get
the oblivious and naive among both the watchers and collectors to be more
aware of the above topical issues. My view is that if we are  going to let
them live then let them live naturally, but if we are going to kill them
then do it for a useful scientific purpose.

Ron Gatrelle


 
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