
Enough with the dead butterflies - mjn
http://emilydamstra.com/news/please-enough-dead-butterflies/
======
syphilis2
I'm glad to have this pointed out to me. It's so "obvious" now that live
butterflies don't look that way, I'll never not notice this now. It's similar
to all the tricks video media uses for aesthetics and common familiarity: gun
cocking noises, computer hacking images, punch sound effects, and the like. It
also remind me of location specific tricks, such as how the pyramids of Giza,
Egypt are shown in pictures, or how wildlife photographers sometimes do staged
photoshoots.

I think it's a very good thing to be aware of this. So much of our information
is received through indirect means, how many things do we watch on video
without understanding how the image and sound has been enhanced? I've been
surprised before to see something in person and realize the media
representation is not accurate.

~~~
XaspR8d
> such as how the pyramids of Giza, Egypt are shown in pictures

I was totally on the same wavelength with Karl Pilkington in _An Idiot Abroad_
when he discovered they were right next to the city. It's such a weird
censoring -- would people value them less if they knew how close they were to
development?

For reference here[1] is a traditional shot of the pyramids, and here[2] is an
aerial view of the adjoining urban area.

[1] -
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:All_Gizah_Pyramids.j...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:All_Gizah_Pyramids.jpg)

[2] - [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giza-
pyramids.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giza-pyramids.JPG)

~~~
iamatworknow
I was in San Antonio, Texas last week and while not exactly on the same scale
as the pyramids, The Alamo has a similar middle-of-nowhere isolated feel to it
when represented in the media, while in actuality it's smack dab in the middle
of downtown -- surrounded by hotels and gift shops.

~~~
jitl
The Alamo was the most underwhelming historical anything I've ever visited.
Not only is it in the middle of downtown San Antonio, it's also rather small,
and San Antonio itself is a sticky tropical rainforest. Nothing like arid,
lonely fort of the popular culture depictions of the Alamo.

~~~
exclusiv
Isn't the fact that it's small a big part of the historical significance?

~~~
aaron-lebo
Not really. It housed 200 defenders, but it was undermanned at that capacity.

------
murbard2
To be honest, the dead butterflies do look aesthetically more pleasing. I
can't tell if it's because the image is culturally ingrained or if the shape
is simply more elegant. That said, I welcome this knowledge which opens a
whole new opportunity for me to be pedantic at parties.

~~~
farnsworth
I have to agree - the live butterfly shape is clearly more aerodynamic and
realistic, but that long leading edge perpendicular to the body just makes me
think of a stealth bomber or 747 for some reason. The dead butterfly shape is
delicate and elegant. Besides identification, maybe that's another reason that
they mount them that way.

~~~
taneq
I wonder how tightly tied your perception of 'delicate' and 'elegant' is with
'impractical' / 'less capable'?

It reminds me of this blog post on the topic of 'cuteness' in Japanese
culture:

> Female protagonists in Japanese genre productions have to be cute,
> apparently. And cuteness is, I’m told, context-dependent. Big anime eyes and
> tiny pointed noses may be necessary but they are not sufficient. There must
> also be jeopardy.

Source:
[http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=4843](http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=4843)

~~~
farnsworth
'delicate', yes I think it's absolutely tied to 'impractical' in my mind.
'elegant' maybe isn't the right word for what Im' feeling here. As an
engineer, I see elegance in practicality, efficiency, and straightforwardness.

~~~
taneq
'artistic' or 'aesthetic', maybe, for the second one?

Like you, I tend to see efficiency as most beautiful, especially when one
simple structure fulfills several complex requirements simultaneously. A tiger
or a gazelle is beautiful because it's very close to optimal for the niche
it's evolved to fill.

~~~
murbard2
The Gazelle, perhaps, but what's optimal about orange fur for a jungle
dweller?

~~~
taneq
I dunno but maybe it's the equivalent of countershading camouflage? Tigers are
ambush predators that attack from above. If a tiger's fur only accounts for a
small percentage of the sky above you, and orange and blue are complementary
colours, then small bits of orange fur plus blue sky shouldn't stand out.

------
erroneousfunk
Fascinating! I have a dozen dead butterflies, pinned in frames at home (I
really like [http://www.bugunderglass.com/](http://www.bugunderglass.com/) if
anyone's interested in unique home decorating -- I'm not associated with them
in any way, but I've been buying their bugs for almost 6 years now!) and I
used to raise moths from local caterpillars when I was a kid (you know, back
before I found computers and actually played outside).

I _knew_ the difference between dead and alive butterfly/moth wing positions,
but never consciously noticed the difference in artistic depictions. Heck, I
volunteer at the Boston Museum of Science every week and must have seen that
Monarchs poster a hundred times without noticing.

Comparing art that "did it right" and art that "did it wrong" \-- yeah, if you
do it right, it looks a LOT more realistic and "lively," even if I wouldn't
have known why before reading this article. I'll have to keep an eye out from
now on!

~~~
hobofan
Raising a death's-head hawkmoth was one of the coolest projects my mother did
with us when we were children! It is really neat to experience their entire
development process firsthand.

------
c3534l
This is one of those things you can't unsee. I'm going to be walking around
the world now seeing butterflies drawn in death-poses.

~~~
my_ghola
But do all dead butterflies get into that pose? I'm sure some of the ones with
more natural looking poses are dead too.

~~~
c3534l
I think it's like when you have a human corpse with his wrists crossed on top
of the chest. Sure, not all or,actually, hardly any people are buried with
that pose. It'd still be weird if you always drew people sleeping like that.

------
aurizon
Sadly, butterflies and other insects are pinned like this for entomological
examination, which requires the wings, antenna, legs etc are fully extended so
that all manner of detail can be seen. Many species are different in minor
ways, having reached a very similar body design by evolutionary convergence.
Numbers of spines, hairs, scales etc are all enumerated. Once dry, they get
very very brittle and you can not spread wings/legs etc in fear of breakage.
It sounds strange, but a number of beetles, butterflies and other insects have
been discovered that look the same - until you examine some of these esoteric
aspects. Genomic analysis is the gold standard in these matters. read a few of
these search hits.
[https://www.google.ca/search?q=entomological+examination+of+...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=entomological+examination+of+similar+species&oq=entomological+examination+of+similar+species&aqs=chrome..69i57.19966j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#safe=active&q=entomological+variation+of+similar+species)

~~~
kgwgk
Your comment reminded me of something I read recently:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3036677/New-m...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3036677/New-
monkey-species-discovered-scientists-notice-unusual-shape-penis.html)

~~~
aurizon
Yes, insects are full of mimicry...

------
rrauenza
My wife had an interesting perspective I'll share:

"Maybe it helps to think of illustrated butterflies as a kind of
iconography...One of the first things little kids (especially girls) learn to
draw is “a butterfly” (meaning, a dead butterfly). It will not have anything
like natural coloring, and might have big friendly eyes, but will definitely
have two curling antennae and spread, uplifted wings. It’s a heraldic image,
like a lion rampant. Lions don’t look like that, but the symbol says what it
needs to."

Now all I can think of is the perl6 butterfly, Camelia...

------
sopooneo
I think this may just be another instance of the coconut affect.

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCoconutEffect](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCoconutEffect)

~~~
knice
I once had a job making ice cream and it bothered me that I had to add yellow
food coloring to the banana ice cream. We used real bananas and didn't add
banana flavor. But I was told to add yellow color anyway.

~~~
compiler-guy
There is an old cooking adage that, "You eat with your eyes first."

Making food aesthetically pleasing does add flavor to that first sample.

~~~
jimmaswell
I saw something about a restaurant where the food is served in the dark a
while ago, so that this can't happen.

~~~
nocman
Wow, I'm not sure I'd want to eat in a restaurant that purposefully prevented
me from seeing what I was eating!

xD

------
J5892
LPT: If a friend has a tattoo that you now recognize as a dead butterfly, you
probably shouldn't tell them.

~~~
bm1362
I have a tattoo that is a butterfly with a skull in the middle. It's wings are
in the upright position, meaning it's dead and pinned so uh I guess it's okay?
It's a bad tattoo either way and has become a pretty regular joke.

If any of my friends are reading this; it's too late to tease me.

~~~
DonaldFisk
Butterfly? Deaths Head Hawk Moths have a skull on the thorax
([http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/acherontia-
atropos/adult-3...](http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/acherontia-
atropos/adult-3/) )· They're hawk moths, not butterflies.

~~~
bm1362
I'm aware, it's been mistaken for a butterfly (mostly my friends teasing me) a
few times so I've somewhat owned the joke now.

This is more representative:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Ac...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Acherontia_lachesis_MHNT_Female_N%C3%AElg%C3%AEri_%28Tamil_Nadu%29.jpg/161px-
Acherontia_lachesis_MHNT_Female_N%C3%AElg%C3%AEri_%28Tamil_Nadu%29.jpg)

------
strictnein
Don't anyone show her what a human heart actually looks like.

~~~
Asooka
Well, the inverted scrotum we use right now is a better symbol of lust anyway.

~~~
mikeash
Great, I'll never be able to un-see that.

~~~
anc84
For a very long time I thought <3 was a variation of :3

~~~
mixedCase
Thank you, you will now make me picture a scrotum with eyes everytime I see
that.

------
ManeSequins
See also: ubiquitous depictions of bright red shrimp, crabs, and lobsters
swimming around in the ocean.

~~~
colanderman
As a rabbit "parent", I now shake my head at every depiction of a rabbit with
_pads on its feet_ like a cat(!) (Rabbits' feet are padless and entirely
covered with fur.)

viz. every cartoon with visible foot bottoms here:
[https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&q=easter+bunny](https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&q=easter+bunny)

Also… rabbits don't typically eat carrots, they eat carrot _tops_. (Just like
how cats don't drink milk, and mice don't eat cheese. Sure, they like it, but
where would a mouse find cheese in the wild?)

~~~
xherberta
I guess as long as there has been cheese, mice have been eating it.

------
watty
I guess we all have pet peeves but this one (while interesting) is a bit
silly. Pillow designers are looking to create an attractive pillow that will
sell - let's face it, a dead butterfly is more aesthetically pleasing than a
living one due to the outstretched wings.

~~~
jfk13
A dead butterfly may fit more "snugly" into the frame of a square pillow, but
personally -- and aesthetics, after all, are rather subjective -- I would
dispute that it is "more aesthetically pleasing" than a living one.

(Disclaimer: this has long been a pet peeve of mine, too, as my wife could
testify!)

~~~
watty
Yes, I didn't mean to speak for everyone - I'm sure many people prefer the
living picture which has more emphasis on the body and less emphasis on the
wings.

~~~
cannam
Not just the body, but also the layering or overlap of the wing segments which
makes the sheathing mechanism apparent - that is very beautiful in itself
(even if I don't know the right terms for these things). The typical image
looks unnaturally stretched and two-dimensional in comparison.

I found the article aesthetically as well as scientifically persuasive.

------
mast
I can understand how an illustrator could be bothered by something like this.
It is your job to be accurate yet you see so many examples where others do not
meet your own standards.

Slightly off topic (and related to moths not butterflies), but this sites
includes wonderful detail on how moths are prepared high resolution scans:
[http://ottawa.moths.ca/technical.html](http://ottawa.moths.ca/technical.html)

~~~
moultano
I started following a bunch of paleo-artists on twitter and now I find it hard
to look at kids' dinosaur stuff anymore.
[http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2010/03/03/zombie-h...](http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2010/03/03/zombie-
hands-to-bird-wings-the-evolution-of-the-dinosaur-w/)

------
j_m_b
Interesting article. Something else I'll notice everywhere, like bad kerning.
Thanks ;)

------
DonaldFisk
With butterflies, it doesn't matter much if you set them in their wings-flat
resting position, as you can still see all of both pairs of wings, but with
other lepidoptera it definitely does make a difference. With few exceptions,
when moths are resting, their hind wings are hidden, but setting them in the
traditional way allows both wings to be seen. So I suppose for consistency,
butterflies are set the same way that moths (i.e. all other lepidoptera) are.

Incidentally, with a bit of practice you can sneak up to resting or feeding
butterflies and photograph them close-up (e.g. with a smartphone), provided
you don't make sudden movements. So now you can have proof of sighting and a
permanent visual record without the need to kill them.

------
notadoc
I rarely see any butterflies these days

~~~
elihu
The population of Monarch butterflies in the U.S. has declined quite a bit
since the 90's. I'm not sure if other species have had similar declines.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_butterfly#Threats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_butterfly#Threats)

------
mirimir
One could write an analogous article about birds. In painting the 435 images
in _The Birds of America_ , John James Audubon probably shot at least a few of
each species. And then stuffed and mounted them.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon#/media/File...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon#/media/File:John_James_Audubon_1826.jpg)

------
roguecoder
This is a great example of how detailed, specific nerd-ery about just about
any topic can be super-cool and interesting!

------
_ph_
I never noticed, but it is indeed a bit odd that most drawings show
butterflies in a position they would't assume while living. Of course there is
artistic freedom, but when a realistic display is intended, a more true-to
life posture should be used.

~~~
Declanomous
The reason why nature illustrations look a particular way is actually really
interesting. I don't have a source to show, but we actually learned a bit
about biological illustrations as part of my biology degree.

To make a long story short, illustrations tend to depict what you are trying
to show. An unnatural position might be the best way to illustrate an organism
if you are providing a guide for people to classify them with, especially if
you can only provide a single photo.

The more natural depictions of birds, etc. can all basically be traced back to
John James Audubon. Before then almost every illustration looked exceedingly
staged.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon#Art_and_met...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon#Art_and_methods)

------
darkerside
[https://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/im...](https://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/images/vm/leonardo.jpg)

------
eth0up
This lady's art is stunning. I highly recommend not leaving at the dead
butterfly article. The portfolio, in particular.

------
pvaldes
This would be like to say "please stop to drawn the parts of a flower and
opened fruits in botanical illustrations. Is gruesome to see all those
mutilated plants".

There is a reason to drawn both wings in the same plane, is much easier to
classificatory purposes and is needed in some special cases because
butterflies can have totally different marks in its right and left wings.

------
davvolun
I've never seen such a shocking injustice I cared so little about!

------
patorjk
Although it's a silly pet peeve, it's interesting to realize that the standard
pose society has adopted for butterflies is one in which they're typically
dead. Definitely changes the way I look at pictures of butterflies.

------
elmalto
This is really incredible. Thank you for this insightful post

------
SomeStupidPoint
Are their wings not outstretched mid flap?

I seem to recall that looking down on flying butterflies has them look an
awful lot like I see in pictures, or even when they wiggle their wings
perched, but that could be memory being fickle.

~~~
scott_s
My understanding was that it's not that the pinned position is just
outstretched, but also pulled forward. It's that forward position (I think)
that they rarely ever take.

------
pferde
Please, enough with the blog sites that do not show any article at all without
javascript!

~~~
anigbrowl
I fully agree that people should stop doing that when _making_ blogs, but you
can hardly demand that people stop _submitting_ interesting content just
because said contact has been hijacked by hyperactive designers/service
providers.

Boycotting a technology you don't like is ineffective unless it's monopolized
and there a single provider on whom to focus the boycott efforts. Extensions
that filter out such annoyances (like adblockers) are somewhat effective but
result in arms races. Subversion through 3rd party tagging or the creation of
other undesirable second-order effects seems like the best strategy. Perhaps
someone with more technical knowledge could come up with better suggestions.

It's a valid problem, which I encourage you to consider, write up, and submit
in its own right.

------
natch
OK you pronounce "Bejing" with a normal, regular, everyday hard 'j' sound as
it's supposed to be pronounced (not some fake exotic sounding airy zzzhhhhhh
sound you and everyone else just made up out of thin air) and I promise not to
kill or pin any butterflies.

I really thought the peeve was going to be about pictures of butterflies on
people's mouths (Silence of the Lambs). That bugs me, but I guess with the
movie it was supposed to.

~~~
woah
Do you want it pronounced like "edging" or "aging"?

~~~
Epenthesis
Do you pronounce those differently? Where'd you grow up? In all the English
dialects I'm familiar with, those are pronounced the same.

Regardless, it's the "j sound" of "James" (as well as of both "edging" and
"aging" for those of you who pronounce them the same) and _not_ the "j sound"
of "Jaques" (or the "z" sound of "azure").

(For those familiar with IPA, /be.'dʒiɲ/ not /be.'ʒiɲ/)

~~~
amyjess
If you really want to get pedantic, it should be an unaspirated "ch" (as
opposed to _q_ , which is aspirated like "ch" usually is in English). And if
you want to get _even more pedantic_ , it's a dual-articulated sound and not a
pure postalveolar sound like in English.

That is, IPA [t͡ɕ]

Edit: And if anyone's curious, there are four sounds in Mandarin that English-
speakers will interpret as forms of "ch", varying based on aspiration and
point(s) of articulation. In Pinyin, all four have distinct romanizations
(which is one advantage Pinyin has over Wade-Giles).

    
    
        Pinyin  IPA  Articulation           Aspirated
        ch      [ʈ͡ʂʰ] postalveolar retroflex  Y
        zh      [ʈ͡ʂ] postalveolar retroflex  N
        q       [t͡ɕʰ] dual alveolo-palatal    Y
        j       [t͡ɕ] dual alveolo-palatal    N
    

By contrast, English "ch" is postalveolar but not retroflex, and aspiration
depends on context: IPA [t͡ʃʰ] or [t͡ʃ].

~~~
dghf
Am I correct in my recollection that the sound represented by "b" is actually
closer to the unaspirated "p" in words like "spin" and "spot"?

~~~
amyjess
Indeed you are.

