The difference between live and dead butterflies

January 9, 2022 1:03 PM

Please, enough with the dead butterflies!

via Mefite Rash's blog

posted by youarenothere (23 comments total)

I wasn't sure what to expect when I clicked, but that was very informative. Even though I've of course seen mostly live butterflies, I'd never noticed that mounted dead specimens are in a different position. Thanks for teaching me something!
posted by pangolin party at 1:25 PM on January 9, 2022 [6 favorites]

I'm gonna get a tattoo of a dead butterfly perched on a dysfunctional pair of scissors surrounded by eight-pointed snowflakes and a crescent moon with a star inside. You can't stop me
posted by oulipian at 1:51 PM on January 9, 2022 [25 favorites]

Thanks for sharing this, I will now paint live butterflies from now on!
posted by rpfields at 1:54 PM on January 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ah, live butterflies. I love having a camera in my phone. I can collect flowers and insects and butterflies, without harming them!!! WOW! I happen to live where I have lots of blossoms and butterflies. Not enough Monarchs though. The ground here is more wet than milkweed likes.
posted by Goofyy at 1:58 PM on January 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

next do the red, boiled crabs permeating fiction that i always choose to interpret as necromantically-animated zombie crabs
posted by glonous keming at 1:59 PM on January 9, 2022 [13 favorites]

Now I'm going to see dead butterflies everywhere, aren't I?
posted by mollweide at 2:01 PM on January 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

I cannot help now picturing Vitruvian Man in a trenchcoat, cigarette in hand, spread-eagled next to a lamppost.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 2:02 PM on January 9, 2022 [6 favorites]

We get a lot of swallowtails. I have seen incredible flying by those guys.
posted by Max Power at 2:09 PM on January 9, 2022

Love this.
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:11 PM on January 9, 2022

Now that I have this knowledge, how am I supposed to resist "well, actually" every time I see one of these?

HOW, INTERNET?
posted by clawsoon at 2:38 PM on January 9, 2022 [11 favorites]

I am literally in the process of commissioning two different artists to do pictures of butterflies (as small parts of two much larger projects). I will pass this link to both of them. Thank you.
posted by Hogshead at 2:51 PM on January 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

Goddammit, now I'll see that everywhere. Also thanks! That sort of error is common and hard to avoid when drawing from reference on a subject you aren't an expert in, and now it's not a mistake I'll ever make again.

(a crescent moon on the horizon, in addition to the star thing, should also usually be oriented with the horns up-ish unless you are pretty far north, and the artist should be aware that it can give a rough idea of east/west if that matters. The impossible moon is one of the great things about the Truman Show... )
posted by surlyben at 2:54 PM on January 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

(a crescent moon on the horizon, in addition to the star thing, should also usually be oriented with the horns up-ish unless you are pretty far north, and the artist should be aware that it can give a rough idea of east/west if that matters. The impossible moon is one of the great things about the Truman Show... )

I had a very weird kids book about the night sky which pointed out that the moon is oriented like a drawn bow if the arrow were pointed at the sun.
posted by clawsoon at 3:01 PM on January 9, 2022 [7 favorites]

Just ran to my mom's guest bathroom to check, yes, 6 dead colorful butterflies on the wall next to the toilet seat.
posted by polymodus at 3:11 PM on January 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

Thank you, I learned something neat!
posted by obfuscation at 3:40 PM on January 9, 2022

This is good to know! Also, beautiful illustrations! (the live ones, by the author, that is)
posted by Glinn at 3:45 PM on January 9, 2022

OMG yes. My people.
posted by desuetude at 5:32 PM on January 9, 2022

Ha, this is great! I feel like I’ve been liberated from a great, society-wide lie/delusion, like when I was younger and learned that lobsters are only red once they’ve been cooked, or more recently when it became widely known that a blob fish doesn’t look like that when it’s alive.
posted by ejs at 6:20 PM on January 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

Some animal is going to get revenge by depicting all humans in rigor mortis.
posted by clawsoon at 5:37 AM on January 10, 2022

In the Before Times, when it came time for us to say goodbye to someone in the ICU, the nurses placed a large colorful depiction of a butterfly on the door. They explained to us that the butterfly was symbolic of transition and it was a gentle way of letting everyone on the floor know what was going on in the room so that there wouldn't be any interruptions or misunderstandings etc.

I don't remember if that butterfly was dead or not and I'm weirdly curious now. I want to say it was alive and the hospital had especially good understanding of butterflies, but if it was a dead one I'd quietly chuckle.

(Also, butterflies as decorations kind of creep me out now. Especially the dead-and-pinned variety. Why would anyone keep such gastly things for show?)
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:31 AM on January 10, 2022

I personally don't manage to care about this, even if I try with both hands. But I really like that the author clearly cares a whole lot.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:21 PM on January 10, 2022

These are my people. I personally don't manage to not care about this.

The first time I remember getting in trouble in school was when I colored in a duckling in browns and dark yellows instead of the fluorescent yellow the teacher expected. I had just seen brown and dark yellow live ducklings a few days before at a farm. I (loudly and violently) refused to re-do the work and got detention at 5 years old.

The following year I got in trouble again for (loudly and violently) correcting the teacher when she drew symmetrical human lungs on the blackboard. This escalated into me biting the teacher and drawing blood and the teacher getting me expelled from school.

The following 15 years were an exercise in learning to temper my loud and violent reactions to obviously wrong illustrations of nature. Dead butterflies in flight, boiled crabs and prawns prancing around, wrong legged arthropods, impossible astronomy, rubber-skeletoned superheroes, jammed gears turning... the list goes on and on.

Took me over 5 years of looking to find a tattoo artist that really cares about correctness. I thought I had found one, but they drew the wrong number of gill slits on a shark and I just could not.

I got better, now it is a tiny irritation, but it is still there.
posted by Dr. Curare at 1:37 PM on January 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

Well. Damn. What a lot of dead butterfly brooches I have.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:20 AM on January 13, 2022