[written in April 2004 but updated here to sync with the actual event]
I = Interviewer
B = butterfly
I met some butterflies and asked each of them if they had some time to spare for a moment, none of them agreed. Finally I found one chap who said “yes while Im having a quick nectar-break – shoot!”
I: How come u guys are so colorful?
B: Ahh… my wings are made up of thousands of tiny scales which refract the light creating beautiful colours and patterns.
I: How are you different from a moth?
B: Both of us belong to the same insect group called Lepidoptera. In general we differ from moths in the following ways: (1) we usually have clubbed antennae but moths have fuzzy or feathery antennae. (2) We normally are active during the daytime while most moths are active at night. (3) When we rest, we do so with our wings held upright over our body. Moths, on the other hand, rest with their wings spread out flat. However, we bask with our wings out-stretched! (4) we are generally more brightly colored than those stupid moths but ok there may be some exceptions.
I: Ok I already know about your lifecycle – I read it in school – egg, larva, pupa.
B: Oh yeah… those were my good old days! Not a care in life! When I was a teenager… er… caterpillar I had a lot several pairs of true legs, along with several pairs of false legs or prolegs. My primary activity was eating! Boy was I hungry! I ate almost constantly. My body grew considerably. The tough outer skin or exoskeleton, however, dosent catch up with me and I ditch that old exoskeleton in a process called molting… and replace it with a new, larger exoskeleton, several times.
I: Then you became a pupa and take a long nap right?
B: Ahh… the casual observer may think that because the pupa is motionless that very little is going on during this “resting stage.” However, it is within the chrysalis shell that my structure is broken down and rearranged into the wings, body and legs that I have now. I did not feed but instead got all my energy from the food I had hogged in my younger days.
I: And now youre a full grown adult!
B: Yeah… though some of my cousins live for as long as 18 months, life is usually short and sweet… we live for around a week to 30 days… and freak out with with wine & women!
Edited info from source:
——————–
butterfly photo details:
F 2.8
Exp: 1/176 sec
both butterflies location: Chikmagalur near Muthodi forest
moth Location:
Mudhumalai forest
Camera: Olympus D-460 autofocus
——–
Er… totally a digression… I havent really had time to learn about the moth… its more about the location… I saw the moth in the bathroom of the forest lodge there, which trigerred an old memory:
———–
15-Aug-2002
Thursday
We entered the room Ashok’s dad had reserved, it was a nice cottage, just in front of the river. That was the good news. The bad news was that the bathroom was right at the back. The cottage was surrounded by an external compound wall completely grilled up to the roof, but there was still space among those grills for a snake to easily crawl through. And the bolt of the back door of the compound was broken; a simple push would suffice to open the door. I remembered Jim Corbett’s stories, where leopards pushed through doors and rested in some dark corner of the house to take shelter from the
rain outside, only to be discovered by a horrified resident which happened to be the last discovery that he ever made. We unpacked our bags, and whenever I wanted to go to the bathroom, I asked someone to come with me till the end of the corridor, and first flashed my torch around each corner and thoroughly examined the path before venturing around it.
———–
[TODO: update photographs]
Leave a Reply