Related tags:
nature + (4)
insects + (4)

From blimps to bugs, an explosion in aerial drones is transforming the way America fights and thinks about its wars. Predator drones, the Cessna-sized workhorses that have dominated unmanned flight since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are by now a brand name, known and feared around the world. But far less known is the sheer size, variety and audaciousness of a rapidly expanding drone universe, along with the dilemmas that come with it.(via) [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar on Mar 30, 2012 - 66 comments

The Beauty of Pollination - 4 minutes bursting with life. (via @stevesilberman)
posted by madamjujujive on Jan 11, 2012 - 11 comments

Isaac Kehimkar's entire Flickr photostream is devoted to butterflies, because he's an "ardent butterfly lover".
posted by bwg on Feb 7, 2011 - 20 comments

Nabokov Butterfly Theory Is Vindicated "Nabokov came up with a sweeping hypothesis for the evolution of the butterflies he studied, a group known as the Polyommatus blues. He envisioned them coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves. Few professional lepidopterists took these ideas seriously during Nabokov’s lifetime. But in the years since his death in 1977, his scientific reputation has grown. And over the past 10 years, a team of scientists has been applying gene-sequencing technology to his hypothesis about how Polyommatus blues evolved. On Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right."
posted by dhruva on Jan 26, 2011 - 27 comments

The Butterfly Hunter. Klea McKenna's photographs of her father's butterfly collection. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Dec 9, 2008 - 6 comments

The Insect Close-ups Flickr Pool is full of fascinating pictures. There are all kinds of wonderful images to be found, of spiders, ladybugs, hornets, aphids, grasshoppers, worms, water striders and those superstars of the insect world, bees and butterflies. You can also search a map for pictures by location. If you want to take your own bug photographer Mark Plonsky has written a short how-to guide. He has taken some pretty great photographs of insects himself.
posted by Kattullus on Nov 21, 2008 - 14 comments

Graffiti for Butterflies [via mefi projects] Making signposts and rest areas to help monarch butterflies on their journey.
posted by NikitaNikita on Aug 3, 2008 - 16 comments

Edward James (1907 - 1984) was a millionaire Scottish, art patron and surrealist who moved to Mexico in 1947 to grow orchids. After the orchids were destroyed by a freak snowstorm in 1962, he decided to switch to experiments in architecture. He built a monument to surrealism called Las Pozas, just outside of Xilitla. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Jul 11, 2006 - 21 comments

Help Wanted: Exorcist Although I would prefer more Monarch Butterflies, their utility is more visible to me, but perhaps we're just seeing an evolution of the god gene. David Brooks, apparently moving away from his neocon pals, has posted a different help wanted ad while some triumphant right wing Evangelicals are planning a different kind of recruiting.
posted by billsaysthis on Feb 19, 2005 - 6 comments

Exotic Entomology. 'Provided for your delight are a small number of the world's butterflies and moths, taken from Dru Drury's three-volume monograph entitled Illustrations of Exotic Entomology.'
Related :- Schreber's Fabulous Beasts. 'In 1774 Johann Christian Dan Schreber authored a multivolume set of books entitled Die Saugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen. Focusing on mammals of the world, these books were lavishly illustrated with 755 hand-colored plates ... '
posted by plep on Jul 5, 2003 - 8 comments

It took the Smithsonian author and naturalist Kjell B. Sandved 24 years to find all the letters that went into the butterfly alphabet. Along the way he found butterfly wings imprinted with salutations and smiling, happy faces, and threatening expressions on wings and flowers with menacing expressions that say "Do Not Eat Me". Explore the site yourself by going directly to the gallery without looking at all of the images I've linked to, or read the story of how Sandved discovered his magnificent obsession.
posted by iconomy on Apr 29, 2003 - 23 comments

Butterfly farming, whether it's to provide live, captive-bred butterflies or framed insects, is a way for people to generate income by nurturing rainforest habitat rather than cutting it down. It's happening in places like Costa Rica, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. But you can also raise butterflies yourself.
posted by mcwetboy on Nov 2, 2002 - 6 comments

Loggers Said to Wipe Out 22 Million Butterflies It appears that 22 million Monarch butterflies were illegally slaughtered through the use of pesticide in two Mexican butterfly sanctuaries so that loggers can have more forest to tear down. This makes me sick... how can people do stuff like this?
posted by fusinski on Mar 6, 2001 - 20 comments

I used to raise lepidoptera as a kid. Other people still do, and some even sell livestock.
posted by plinth on Jun 2, 2000 - 0 comments