Tasting butterflies?

Thu Jul 26 22:59:31 EDT 2001

My two-year old daughter was happily munching on potato chips when she
picked a moribund but still living Phyciodes tharos.  She lost of track of
which hand had the chip and at the buttefly in stead.  She came to her
grandfather with bits of butterfly wing still on her leps with no obvious
reaction.

Daniel Glaeske
St. Victor, SK

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-leps-l at lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-leps-l at lists.yale.edu]On
Behalf Of Niklas Wahlberg
Sent: July 26, 2001 6:06 AM
To: leps-l at lists.yale.edu
Subject: Tasting butterflies?

At 06:50 2001.07.26 -0400, Michael Gochfeld wrote:

>Som do Monarchs really taste worse than Viceroys? I'm sure someone must
>have rendered a formal opinion.
>
>Mike Gochfeld

Hi all,
     This reminds me of something that I've been thinking about for a long
time. Are brightly coloured butterflies actually bad tasting? There have of
course been some studies using birds as the innocent tasters, but such
experiments require quite some infrastructure. What about the human sense
of taste? Even if human taste is not quite representative of for example
bird taste or even less representative of spider or predatory bug taste,
wouldn't it give us some idea of the palatability of the butterflies? For
instance, a colleague of mine recently told me that he tasted an adult
Melitaea athalia (heath fritillary) just on the spur of the moment, and it
apparently tasted really bitter and bad (in his own words "It is utterly
and horribly bitter, like some relly BAD German liquor"). I've never
gathered up the courage to taste my study subjects (the checkerspot
butterflies), even though I assume they are bad tasting based on work done
by Deane Bowers in the early '80s on a couple of species of Euphydryas.
Perhaps I should start tasting?? Satyrines for instance are always assumed
to be tasty to birds and they eat them with apparent relish in cages. But
are they really tasty (or perhaps tasteless)? Has anybody on this list
tasted any butterflies? If you have, I would be very interested to hear
about your experience!

Cheers,
Niklas

Niklas Wahlberg
Department of Zoology
Stockholm University
S-106 91 Stockholm
SWEDEN

Phone: +46 8 164047
Fax:   +46 8 167715

http://www.zoologi.su.se/research/ihp/

 ------------------------------------------------------------

   For subscription and related information about LEPS-L visit:

   http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/lepsl

 ------------------------------------------------------------ 

   For subscription and related information about LEPS-L visit:

   http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/lepsl 