Butterflies Behaving Badly?

[Grkovich, Alex]

Well said, Ron. My feelings exactly. I have been
collecting/watching/studying butterflies for 46 years, since I was 6, and I
have never seen a Monarch dive-bombing another butterfly in the wild, nor
have I ever seen a black bear masturbating in the woods. As far as
collections are concerned, I remember reading some years back that "the
hallmark of an amateur collection is one full of showy large beautiful
specimens without data." To me, the dullest Duskywing is as important as the
largest Giant Swallowtail.

The other thing about Butterfly Houses is this: When I visited the one in
Westport, MA last year, I was taken aback by the thousands of wings laying
all over the place on the ground. It seems that the aviary is a wonderful
breeding place for spiders and that the concentration of spiders in there is
extremely high in relation to the concentration butterflies, when compared
to that in nature. It seems to me that not only is the aviary a prison, but
it is also a torture chamber for the butterflies in regards to predation.

One last thing about my collection: I do not and never have and absolutely
will not purchase a specimen. My collection is the result of my own hard
work in the field. This is what the "watcher/anti-collector" must come to
understand about the collector who collects out of an interest in science.

Alex

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Ron Gatrelle [SMTP:gatrelle at tils-ttr.org]
> Sent:	Thursday, August 23, 2001 1:10 AM
> To:	Leps-l
> Cc:	Carolina Leps; Southwest Leps
> Subject:	Butterflies Behaving Badly? 
> 
> 
> 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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