"Watchers are fascists" ???

[Mike Quinn]

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris J. Durden
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 10:27 PM
To: leps-l at lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: animal torture for pleasure


I vote for #2. Of the 3 choices it comes closest, but it is not an exact
match.
............Chris Durden.

At 03:24 PM 1/25/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Ron, Richard and all,
>
>So which is it?
>
>1) Watchers are animal torturers because they sometimes bungle a netted
>specimen.
>
>2) Watchers are fascists because they will do anything to keep Bambi and
>brethren out of the hands of collectors.
>
>3) Paranoia strikes deep, into your heart it will creep.
>
>Patrick Foley
>patfoley at csus.edu

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

Mike Quinn replies:

Interesting supposition, "watchers are fascists".

But don't the vast majority of lepidopterists only collect a small (if not
tiny) fraction of the butterflies they see on any outing, particularly if
near their home and/or in their favorite collecting ground (if it's north of
Mexico)? In other words, don't lepidopterists themselves watch far more than
they collect and thus spend most of their time "being fascists"...

If watchers are fascists, then I assume that the only true non-fascist good
guys and gals are the few vacuum cleaners out there who collect everything,
no matter how rare or how common. (Their motto being "if it flies, it
dies".) Many of us passed through this phase, particularly if we took
freshman entomology but then quickly ran out of space and time to process
the tremendous volume of material that is easily acquired if one is not
selective.

So if collecting everything is not practical (nor even possible), is there
any middle ground between good-guy vacuum cleaners and fascist watchers?
Chris, as a leader of Victor Emanuel Nature Tour (VENT) field trips, do you
issue nets to all your customers and admonish them to put down their binos
when butterflying, least they be lumped with the fascists?

Perhaps the line between good collectors and fascist watchers is defined by
membership. Lep Soc members: good; NABA members: Bad. There that was easy.
But wait a minute, what about folks (and scientists) that are members of
both? (Can't they make up their minds so that we can properly pigeon-hole
them?!?) Membership categorization's no good, besides guilt by association
went out with McCarthyism.

Perhaps it's just a matter of those who collect are good and those who don't
are bad. But that just brings us back to where we started. How much does one
need to collect to be a collector? Will the collection of one insect per
year bring one into the good-guy ranks of collectordom? Perhaps a higher
standard is needed, at least one insect per month, per week or per outing
should be required.

In ornithology, voice is extremely important in defining species limits.
Perhaps dialect can be definitively used to delineate collector from
watcher. Watchers, of course, tend to use a particular English dialect while
collectors tend towards Latin and/or Greek. But what about Paul Opler whose
widely disseminated field guides are bilingual? Is he a collector or a
watcher?

Perhaps optics holds the key. Watchers tend to use 5 to 10 power binoculars
and/or 1 to 6 power photographic lenses. Collectors often use a variety of
hand lenses, dissecting and compound microscopes. What about those who
photograph specimens, are they just closet watchers? Shucks, drawing the
line between collector and non-collector is proving to be as difficult as
drawing the line between one subspecies and another...

Perhaps #3 comes closest, though it's not an exact match...

Happy Birthday Leps-L, we've apparently come 180 degrees from Leps-L's
inception during the Kral wars...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Mike Quinn
New Braunfels, TX
ento at satx.rr.com


 
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