Lepidopterology (BUTTERFLIES & MOTHS) — Encore Presentation with Phil Torres

Oh Hey, it's all that word bomb podcast on the old Mic Hello from my Closet, per usual. So this week the release schedule is a little wonky because I rushed to put up an episode on Sunday with doctor Michael F. Wells, who has gathered well over five thousand scientists willing to help with COVID nineteen testing, and I wanted to get that episode up asap, so I put

Butterflies are the best, it appears to recorder.

This is your microphone.

I feel like it's karaoke night.

I know it really is great. Just you just hold it like you're doing a stand up bit.

Okay, so you point it at your face.

Pointed at your face, Philly t exoskeleatoris thank you for being here, happy to be here. Okay, So you are, by all accounts, a lepidopterologist.

Let's let's go with that. Yes, backgrounds and entomology, and I focus a lot of my work on butterflies because they're kind of the best.

Why are they the best? I'm getting right into it.

I mean a lot of it has to do with going way back for me. So when I was a kid, I was out there bringing home bones and snakes and bugs and any thing I could find from the local state park. And then I started taking these butterfly classes as a kid when I was seven years old. And this guy, doctor Andy Warren, who's now the collections manager at University of Florida. He's like amazing butterfly researcher. He taught these classes and he was in high school at

The gulf fritillary, by the way, is this cute little orangey, umber and dark brown butterfly And the underside of its wings have these crazy gorgeous metallic silvery patches. So from the top it looks like the palette for a Thanksgiving tablescape, but on the underside it has markings like a Lady Gaga super Bowl costume for the future anyway, gold fritillary.

And he caught it. I missed it, but it was like the first state record ever recorded in Colorado. And I'm like, Okay, if we can do that at this age, imagine what we can do when I'm like a real human and an adult.

The eight year olds are not real.

They're not Let's let's be honest here.

What happened when he caught it? Were you like, ah, congratulations out?

I mean, I think it was just it was all excitement. It was it was pretty there's probably some high fives. You know, I don't know what the cool word was back then.

But it's probably rad.

Probably rad. I don't know, I was eight.

Yeah, okay, probably a big word. Bition is a big word. Yeah, does doctor Andy Andy Warren?

Yeah?

Do you are you guys? Still? Are you pals?

Totally? We're totally palced still And it's great.

So you too can digitally befriend Andy Warren, the lepidopterologist who inspired Phil. He is at Andy bug Guy on Twitter, so you can have at it. Andy will probably be confused about the sudden spike in his timeline, but it is a low buffet of butterfly and moth photos, totally worth it. Gently stock him.

But yeah, actually I talked to him about getting on Twitter, and now he's just like killing the game. And if you have any butterfly questions, he just he knows it. He knows everything. So he's like the grand master and I'm like his understudy.

And so I know, because I know that you answer a lot of questions when it comes.

To butterfly, I do. I can't help it.

I mean, is it harder for you to answer a question of like what is this caterpillar? Versus what is this butterfly?

It is? I mean, you tend to spend more time working on at least for me, working on the adult and memorizing the different species and knowing where they're found and all that kind of thing. And the caterpillars can be a little trickier. Some are more obvious than others. You know that if it looks like bird poop, then it's probably a swallowtail caterpillar?

Is that true?

That is true? Yeah. A lot of the younger in stars, they will mimic bird poop, so well, oh, that's so smart on a citrus tree, especially, so if you are like smelling a nice orange and you see some bird poop crawling around, and you'd be like, wait a second, that might be a swallowtail butterfly.

What's worse than roving bird poop? And they're like, surprise, how did jubby caterpillar? Side note, if you are like, what is this in star business? Don't worry. As much as I have been a bug lover for the years, I just learned this word recently. I didn't know it. It just means the different stages, like in this case caterpillars, So they just keep molting into a larger size until

I was eleven years old and I had to write a paper in middle school saying what do you want to do when you grow up? And I was like, I want to study entomology at Cornell And that's what because that's where Andy went to study as well, and it's just the best undergrad program that I'd found, and it was it was amazing, and I was just like, this is what I want to do because he would tell these stories of you know, he just came back from South Africa and discovered species a month in Brazil

How many countries do you think you've been to in a quest to look at butterflies and bugs and snakes, sticks and bones.

I don't know, maybe like fifteen or so.

Phil has traveled through most of Latin America, Mongolia, he's done work in Europe. The dude has some frequent flyer miles.

You get around, and that's that's really what drew me to science in general, is just this idea that I mean, it's been a really nice career that I think. I did my first expedition when I was nineteen years old and worked with the grad student. We spent three and a half weeks in Venezuela and found thirty five new species.

When you were you were not twenty yet, you could not run a car. You were six years from running a CARSS and you discovered how many new species?

Thirty five on this trip. I mean it was he was like, really the guy who could look at it. We were studying aquatic beetles at the time, as you do, and it was so cool, and a lot of them were there's in Venezuela, a lot of these beetles. This one genus uh cyclist lives on the side of waterfalls and that's where it specializes. So like, imagine being nineteen and being like, Okay, I guess we're gonna have to travel throughout this beautiful country looking for waterfalls to discover things.

Phil had an experience growing up that always stuck with him, and I'm going to say, right up top, it involved travel and butterflies, which you're gonna find is a recurring theme in Phil's life in US this episode. By the time it's over, I'm just gonna warn you, you're going to be cramming a butterfly net in a steamer trunk and flipping your boss off on your way out the door, like bye bye, I'm off gone to the janga. This episode will inspire you to wreck your life. It's going to be great anyway.

Okay, So, my dad's family is from Nicodagua, and when I was thirteen I can't remember if I was thirteen or fifteen at the times, we did two trips. As a kid. I reached out to the lead entomologist in Nicodagua saying, Hey, I'm coming down. I kind of know what I'm doing. Can I get a permit to collect butterflies and I'll send you photos and kind of we can id them together and he was like sure, and I was like, sweet, let's go find some butterflies. So

Just a note to say that a glass wing is super weird to look at. It's just as it sounds. Most of the wings are totally see through, like it's wearing an invisibility cloak. You can see right through its body. It looks like it exists, but it doesn't. And whenever I see photos of them, and I was just looking at a bunch of them, I always get like these weird kind of goosebumps and like a squiky feeling in my tumers, like a vertigo, Like how are you a

Cool one butterfly usually find a higher elevation or shadier areas in the tropics, and I went home mounted this butterfly, put the location data, all that kind of thing. And then a few months later, my uncle who lives down there, sent us a newspaper article saying, hey, new species of butterfly has been collected on this volcano, Mumbacio, and there's only three specimens that have ever been found. And then I looked at my collection. I was like, oh my gosh,

What does the whole name mean? Do you know?

I don't know. Not Biogen's toloso mumbauenzis Tolosa's my guess? Uh? I don't know. Yeah, let's look it up. We can dig into this. I wonder we'll get the truth.

I want you to know that you're that tried real hard to find the meaning of this scientific name, and I just plump struck out, kiddos. It was named in eighteen fifty one by an entomologist, and I just I have no idea what it means. Spam, I have no idea, you know what. Let's back up. Let's just back up. Let's get to some easier questions first. Okay, so let's define a butterfly. Okay, so I know what a butterfly looks like. But what's the difference between a butterfly and

So lepidoptera translates as like scaly wing. Okay, so that's one of the number one things. You look at those wings and they're covered in little tiny scales, and that's how they get their color. Oh, and that color can be really brilliant and colorful, or it can be drab and brown, and it kind of depends on the thing. So butterflies get a lot of the glory because we see them more often because they're diurnal.

Wait, what is that word again? Diurnal? FYI? I avoid this word a lot because I'm afraid of saying it wrong, and also it sounds like a pea toilet, but it just means not nocturnal. So butterflies awake during the day, which is more than I can say for myself sometimes and.

They're just prettier. But really, butterflies are a type of day.

Flying moth that's so weird.

So when we look at the family tree, there's like moth moth, moth butterfly, and moth moth moth, and they're kind of considered and you know amongst most people as like butterflies on the left and moths on the right.

All right, So it's like a stealth fighter versus a sailboat.

Yes, okay, that is great. I'm going to use that.

You are welcome. Please cite me in all you got it. So butterflies are up typically, typically, there are some that break the rules.

The rule that basically is never broken is looking at the antenna. Okay, So a butterfly, imagine you know you have these too long stocks at the top are too long, you know, things sticking out, and then at the very end it gets a little thick, a little club. If it's got like a club at the end, you were talking about a butterfly. Here, if it's straight or feathery, we're talking about a moth.

Okay, And do they have wildly different eyesight or wildly different like olfactory senses?

Eyesight? For sure. Butterflies fly anything that's flying by day. There are moths that fly as well. They're going to be very visual, so they're looking for brightly colored flowers that are telling them, hey, we've got some nectar for you. They're looking for conspecifics, others of the same species to figure out if they want to mate or chase them out of their territory. They're looking for predators flying around.

Oh, because I've seen a video of you in your YouTube series of Jungle Diaries where you have the world's longest butterfly. Oh yeah, how long is it? And how heavy is that? Because you've got to get up in the canopy. Right.

Yes, I was working with my friend doctor Susan Finkbiner.

Phil and doctor fink Biner went to Cornell together and she's now one of the top butterfly researchers ever in the world. She's super tough. She works deep in the jungle, and she uses this nuts the longest butterfly net available possibly on the open market, to catch butterflies in the rainforest canopy. It extends thirty five feet. It's a thirty five foot long net. I looked all over for on the internet. I couldn't even find one to see how

It didn't pan out that way. We have to like hike up this crazy stream. And I mean it was amazing Pla to work like that's her office every day. Pretty great. But then you open up the butterfly net and I couldn't even I could barely hold the thing. It looks so heavy.

It just keeps It's like a clown cart. You just keep extending and extending.

Like extending it. My arm got tired. I was like, can we is there like a button we can breast that this thing happens, and so yeah, holding it you have to kind of stabilize with your foot and then swinging it and swinging accurately was a whole other level, but it was. It was a blest And every time I do something like that, I'm like, this is such a fun job. Like studying butterflies. You just get to do these crazy things like swing thirty five foot nets in the middle of the jungle.

But what about the bait traps. If you're like, my arm is too tired, Yeah, I'm going to put out a pile of dung and see what happens. Is that what happens? Because you mentioned they were smelly.

They are smelly. So bait traps you get creative and so sometimes you will use a banana bait trap, and this is pretty typical throughout the Tropic because you get bananas, you add some water, maybe some sugar, maybe some beer, and then you close it up and you let it ferment for a few days. You open it up if it smells the nivee in a ripe, and like you

Ah.

So that's like the most PG thirteen version of a butterfly bait.

Okay.

But then you get a little interesting, and we will use rotten fish, so we will ferment like tunic cans, and that was horrible. We will add human urine to it. Hell yeah, and that doesn't make it any better. And then you can also use yeah.

Poop, anything, in particular carnivore poop.

So if you're a vegan, I'm sorry, but your poop probably won't cut it. If you are a carnivore, you have enough. You've got some like good sodium and maybe even some nitrogen they might be going for in there.

Okay.

And so I always joke that, I mean, seeing a jaguar in the wild is an amazing thing, and knowing that they're around, finding images of them on camera traps is great. But what I'm after is jaguar poop, because when you find jaguar poop, you will see some of the rarest butterflies that generally are only found way up on the canopy, but they will come down to the ground to feed on that steamy pile of goods. And

I love that the most Pg. Thirteen version of this is something that has to do with beer. Like it gets so gross from there that the most innocent thing is putting out beer for butterfly.

It is you're fermenting this fruit, right, which is how you make alcohol in the first place. So it becomes slightly alcoholic, and you actually kind of see that these butterflies get a little drunk.

Is that true?

It is very true. How can you tell they're just like getting in bar fights and stuff? There tattoos.

Now you can actually discern which butterflies become inebriated on fermenting fruit if you look super closely, because on some specimens you can see a really small tattoo of a human on the lower back of the butterfly, so the love is very mutual. They love us too. If you'd like a rabbit hole to go down. Type in drunk butterflies on YouTube, and you're gonna find some gems like this one from Ann a girl mpath. His tongue's all curled again, so he's not eating, he's just kind of chilling.

But yes, they can get a little drunk like us.

What okay? Well, this brings me to a question. If they can drink and eat how many moths? How many butterflies actually eat as adults, because don't a lot of them just chub it up when their bibis and they're done. They're like as I'm an adult, all I want to do is mate.

Caterpillars are just big feeding tubes, okay, and they just eat and eat and eat, and they just try to grow into a thing that will then turn into a crystalis or a cocon and then turn into an adult.

So some species feed as adults and live a little longer so that they can have a better chance of finding a mate, maybe a few mates. Hey, other species don't live as long, and thus they don't even bother growing mouths, which is like hello, American horror story.

Butterfly season, they don't have mouth parts because they ate a bunch as a chelby caterpillar and now they're like, I just got a mate. So with them, it is a pheromone. Now, butterflies, well the pheromones too, but with

How pissed were they that she was in a mesh bag? They were so pissed, like I came this whole way. She's like, sorry, I'm in a back tonight.

Maybe tomorrow.

Now. How is it different for butterflies? How do they find each other just by peeping each other on a flower? Like, hey, I saw you on the flower back there. You look very good.

Yeah, it'll be a visual thing usually because they have colors that we can see and also UV colors as well, and then from a close distance, it will oftentimes be a mix of behavior and smell. Okay, So certain species males will defend a territory and wait for a female to come by. Other times they'll be cruising around looking for a female slab and.

Maybe want to roam my windows now.

Close, so that kind of makes a difference. But then up close, butterflies to have a pheromone, and the best thing about butterfly mating is that their pheromones smell really, really good, the super good.

Is this just a personal fetish from a lepidopterologist or would you say bit?

But so, when I was in Peru a couple of months ago, we found this one butterfly and it was on.

Why brownie batter?

Like not even cooked brownies, we're talking the batter. This is so different, and I think it's just it's a mix of incidental that it smells like that. And also this group is known to feed on plants like banana and certain plants that may have some chemicals in them that are volatile and smell nice. And so when the caterpillar eats, it gets into the adult. And so these chemicals have taken a long journey and they have components in them that are kind of like fruit like or

That's so specific.

So if you guys ever catch a butterfly, please please smell it and let me know. The black swallowtails that you get around here, actually the tiger swallowtails as well, the males in the US smell like fruit loops, like exactly like fruit loops.

How did you discover this? Is this the thing that lepid apterologists know about.

They know and they kind of pass on. I think I probably sniff more than other lipidopterologies, but I just like using my nose. I think it's it is when you work a lot with animals, or when you work a lot in the jungle, you start to use your senses a lot more. And not in like like b

I just want to interject to tell you that sloth skulls I just looked it up. They look kind of like a softball wearing dentures plus plastic Halloween vampire teeth, and they are cute as hell. What's the grossest thing that's happened to you in the jungle? You just about beheading a dead rotting sloth? Yeah, which I can't imagine, like the whack with a machete that must have been.

I've done it with a dead puma too. It's I don't know, it's it's pretty gross, but you start to get a little It's like sad to see the dead things, for sure, but you kind of realize like, oh, we can take this death and make something out of it. And I think skulls and bones are great educational tools, and so you just do what you gotta do.

Have you ever been really really scared in the field.

Yeah, for sure. I definitely do get scared sometimes, and I think that's okay. And one thing that helps is basically just to focus on my work. If I'm out there at night, sometimes I'll hike a loan, which you probably shouldn't do I just really focus on, Okay, what is my target that I'm looking for, if it's a spider or sleeping butterfly or anything like that. The main thing I don't know. We called the jungle scared Okay.

Huh.

Okay, But Fill's greatest fear in the jungle just shocked the socks off me. This is not what I was expecting. Wait till you hear this. I just click baited you in my own podcast. But seriously, you won't believe what this entomologist fears most in the rainforest. Ooh, click click click.

My biggest fear in the jungle is trees. What trees?

Why?

Because they weigh so much, that's true, and tree falls are a very natural part of the cycle of the rainforest. About two to three percent of the rainforest is in the tree fall zone at any moment, and every single day when you're in the jungle, you were here at some point a big s and like sometimes you feel that you earth shake because a tree that could weigh, you know, a few thousand pounds just fell. And not only did it fall, but there's vines everywhere, so it

And never knew. I never considered this, Yeah, I never. I thought maybe you could fall into a pit of alligators, but I never for sure trees.

Yeah, you know, the animals, at least in the New World tropics, so central South America, generally, you're you're pretty okay with most of the things that are down there. There are some other tropics where you have other animals you need to be concerned about. But usually where I work, you're you're pretty good. Just don't get hit by a tree.

Oh I have a question about gifts. Oh yeah, okay, So I know that if you, let's say that you really like pigs or dragons or or you or something, you get a lot of gifts with that. Do you get a lot of butterfly and moth gifts?

I do? I do, And I'm okay with it because I remember somebody got me like a little kitty, you know, is one of those like bug chamber things, like a little fold out thing that is aimed at judging by the font, probably aimed at like seven eight year olds, okay, And I was like, this thing's dope. And I carried around my backpack in the field for like two years and I use it all the time when I found something cool, when I wanted to stick it in there,

I look this up and they're like five bucks on the internet, ear in a toy store, and they look like tiny mesh collapsible laundry hampers the zip down flat, so you can keep a bug catcher in your purse or pocket at all times, like a six year old who might just need to hang out with a cricket or a firefly for a little bit. It's chill.

And also, my favorite thing about gifts and butterflies are the gifts that butterflies give each other such aspects. So it's called a nuptial gift.

Oh your god.

When let's say you love you love a female butterfly, and you're like, what do I do to impress her? So sometimes that tactic will be finding a source of sodium, whether that be in mud or you know, piss or dead animal or jaguar boop. You get that sodium minium, and then you make a sperm packet this thing called a spermatophore, and you inject the whole thing into there. So you're giving her sperm and salt.

Wait a second, so you're giving her like a gift basket. Yeah, that has your geas and then also just like a salt, a salt junk.

You're serious, yes, And it's because salt is generally pretty rare out there. Plants don't have a lot of salt because it's poisonous to them, and so the males kind of say, hey, you're gonna need this to make some nice eggs and for our babies to be happy together, so they give her some salt. But there's also my favorite nuptial gift is poison.

What. Yes, that sucks, although I guess when you buy someone or drink at a bar, you're technically giving them poison, that's right, Yeah, Like here's the poison.

Yeah. So there's this group, the glass wing butterflies, and they are naturally chemically defended by the what they eat as a caterpillar, so they have a certain type of I think it's a cardentolid toxin in them that makes them toxic to most things like birds, but spiders can still eat them, and some other predators can still eat them. So they need to get another toxin as an adult, but only the males do it. So there's certain flowers

They take a chomp and they're like, oh hell no.

Yeah, the spiders somehow detect it, and other predators somehow detect it or they've learned and yeah, and so they hold onto it until they mate. Because the female doesn't go for those flowers. She's busy just being a female flying around. And so when he mates, he gives her sperm, but he also gives her that poison. I think he gives about fifty percent of what he has to the female. Oh yeah, and then he says, here's the gift of poison. Ps.

That's so romantic, it is.

I do not recommend giving the gift of poison. The public disclaimer right now.

Alcohol and perfume both poisonous.

That is true. Sure, that is true.

You've told me before, and I would like you to expand upon this, but that butterflies are disgusting.

They are horribly disgusting.

In what way because they're so beautiful.

They are beautiful, but they're disgusting, you guys. And you find this out when you just spend enough time with them, and it's I find it hilarious. Every time I see them do something even grosser. I'm just like, wow, you do not stop. So let's talk about we're on the topic of mating. Let's talk about mating. They do things like they have sperm plugs and when they mate with the female they plug her up and say, no more

Those pictures don't make sense to me because like a butterflies is a thing that's like on a Mother's Day card. Yeah, but it's also on a rotten carcass.

Yeah, we need to make some new Mother's Day cards to be like, I love you mom. Here's a dead animal, but look at the beautiful butterfly in that little corner. It's there nuggets. Yes, So they feed on dead animals. They love poop, all sorts of poop, especially if you eat some meat in there, they will get drunk. Another thing I've seen so a lot of it is to

So that's a given. Mountain dew dried and you're like, I know one way to rehydrid.

So gross, super gross.

You like that about butterflies, that they have such a beautiful public image but are like secretly super nasty.

Yeah, I mean, there's so much more interesting the people give them credit for. And in the entomology world, people like to give each other a little bit of crap depending on what you study, and they'll be like, oh, you study micro moths, you must be weird. But butterflies seem like the easiest, most approachable insect to most people. So I think some entomologists will be like just kind of like dog on people who study butterflies because they're like, oh, like,

Weird botflies, and like many toothed saber.

Maggots exactly, I love those saber maggots.

So okay, saber maggots are not real, but botflies are very real, and they will lay a baby in your skin which hatches out like a little wormy surprise jumping out of a birthday cake. And entomologists they brag about getting botflied, like Phil has expressed to me before his chagrin and dismay and never having had one of these little, moist, miniature alien esque beings burst from his flesh. One day, Phil, one day you'll get one. Oh okay, quick update. So

And so we came up with an expression when I was working in Ecuador. We said, only tough guys catch butterflies because there's like they're just very complicated. They do gross things, they have really interesting behaviors. They're a really good model to study and they Yeah, you have to be really tough to get out there and study these things.

Uh yeah, you can fall into a volcano chasing an invisible butterfly. And then the jungle is a tangle of dangers and beauty and mystery. Not to mention, there is the ever present mystery of transformation that I feel like that is one thing that just boggles everyone about butterflies, that they are capable of such an extreme makeover, Yeah, such a rebranding. What is happening when you have a chubby caterpillar. You have a tube of guts and then it pieces out is like catch it later gone fishing,

I think there have been some studies that have showed that, yes, some of those memories and aversions can last into an adult. Some people think that they entirely turn to goo inside and then just reform. They don't entirely. There are still some parts that remain, these things called image discs that have been with them for a long time and actually inside some late in star caterpillars, meaning they're they're very

That's crazy. How the hell does he do that?

Just a very tiny knife and a lot of patience, some soran rap, yes, and so you can actually see what's going on inside. So scientists have a pretty cool idea. They've done like MRIs or crazy scans on them to watch this transformation over time. But it is I mean, there are a lot of things in nature that just blow your mind. And that is something that is happening every day around the world. And every kid has done. You know, a lot of kids grow caterpillars into adult

Now the DNA is the same, right is a DNA expression changing? Like how does I just have no idea how it works?

Yeah? So yeah, there will be genes that get expressed differently. It is fascinating how some of the genes will turn on at different times of their life or turn off at different times of their life. And it's it's all stored in that same nucleus. I mean, their DNA has all the information to do all of these things throughout its life.

And now can you tell me the difference between a cocoon and a chrystalist, because I know that those things get used a lot wrongly. And does it piss you off?

It doesn't piss me off, because I mess it up sometimes too, Okay, but just don't do it. Okay, if you're listening at home, it's going to start to piss me off now because you've heard me explain it. So, chrystalis is what a butterfly creates, okay. And it's just a single little wrapping on the outside, and they're right on the inside there, so you can actually see their abdomen still, you can kind of see the wings a little bit in there, and you can if you poke it,

And a lot of times when they change from one instar to the when they upgrade their instain and they get a little chubbier, they don't they eat their skin. I seem to remember that when I volunteering at the butterfly and they.

Will, especially when the hats, they'll eat their egg.

Remember when I was talking about those in stars, those like Russian nesting dolls. So caterpillars will molt into the bigger size, kind of like they're unzipping their skin like a sleeping bag, and then unlike a sleeping bag, they'll eat it after they'll just i'm nomina because it's made out of them and they need to make more of themselves,

Oh goodness, hit me?

I got so many questions. Okay, over forty, but I'm gonna try and blaze through. You don't have to do rapid fire, but.

We got a lot, so just challenge accepted. You ready, where's it go?

Oh?

Butterfly time.

Brian Edge wants to know why are they not called flutterbys?

You know, let's start a public campaign and change this.

Let's do it all right, flutterbys should just be what they're called.

Yeah, So I think the name butterfly comes from. There's a few theories, but supposedly this came from like Europe or the or England or something where one of the common butterflies around there is a sulfur which is kind of yellowe and it looks like butterflying. But that might just be people these days being like this makes sense. Let's say that that's the case. But it's so, yeah, that is why.

Okay, I'm going to look into that. Yeah, because that's really cute. It is very cute. They're just gonna be butterflying. Let's a butterfly damn cute, so quick fact check on this. It's split. Some folks think butterfly came from but flogu, meaning to beatfly as the wings beat, but honestly I prefer the alternate entomology, which is that they're named after floating paths of fat. Also, the German word for butterfly translates to thief of dairy protein or butter liquor or.

There is a real population decline, And when it comes to conservation in the US, I always think that the minimum standard we should have is that future generations of kids get to see butterflies flying around their backyard like that should happen. That was something that in my backyard was happening all the time, and I loved it. And if we've messed up our ecosystem so much that we don't have butterflies for our future generations to see, we've

So make sure that you plant something native. Yes, and you can check on the website and be like, uh.

Huh for sure. Yeah, something for the adults, so some really nice. Some of the cone flowers are great, butterflies love drinking those for the nectar. And then something for the caterpillars too, so there's a lot and like the carrot family, that will be really good for some caterpillars. There's a lot of options out there.

Okay, oh killer. Also it's just like party at my patio. Yea, butterflies for sure invited. I got what you like to drink, Please do come over. So once again, that is the Xerxes Society for Invertebrate Conservation and they're at xerxes dot org. This site is great. I just poked all around it. You can click on your part of the country and a whole list of region specific pollinator plants come up, so you don't have to worry like, what if I plant did the wrong thing, It'll tell you what to plant.

I'm sorry to tell you, but your fear is rational.

No.

So there is a real thing called a vampire moth. This is such a lie, This is this is absolutely real. I think the genus is called Calyptera, and they have a piercing mouth part and a lot of times they they'll find them like on cattle or something out there. But I think they have have landed on humans and like pierced to them and then drank their blood.

This does not feel like a real story. Phil Torras, Please tell me.

If this is If this is this is totally real?

What?

What?

This cannot be real?

And what I love about it is the way that they think it evolved is from previously feeding on fruit. So if you feed on fruit, you need to be able to pierce that skin of the fruit, right, So they've evolved this proboscis that's kind of pointing at the end.

Oh my god.

And then imagine this scenario where one of these butterflies that was feeding on fruit landed on some mammal and maybe was drinking its salt or something like that, and then accidentally pierced through the skin and then got a mouthful of blood. And then that one was like, wow, I have like super powers and can lay a million eggs and maybe with a million females, so they had higher reproductive success. And then that gene and that behavior just evolved into them, and so it all came from

The future sucks, so naturally. I looked up the vampire moth, and despite its hell and death metal habits, it looks very bige, very unassuming, very normcore. So is that the most goth moth I'm feeling like, no, I think that the climbing moth might take it. Hear me out. It's this lily white moth with a black, velvety upside. Down cross on its wings, and it looks very much like it would fly into a hot topic and try to

Lamps, Agent Starling meets mister Acharantia sticks Weird, better known to his friends as the Death's Head moth.

So Deathhead moth. It's got a skull on his face. It's named after a river and hell, and it tricks bees and eats their honey. This is a clear winner of the Gothis moth pageant. Thank you for taking this journey with me. No wait, really quick diversion. Speaking of movies, do you have a favorite butterfly movie? How do you feel about the butterfly effect? Is there any any movies that get butterflies right or wrong?

Uh?

There's a lot to get them wrong. Bugs Life is like still one of my favorite movies ever. It's pretty great, make some mistakes, but I like it. When I was in college, we had an entomology club that we started, and we would get together and we would watch like really bad movies with insect themes. Oh, my God, and like we would watch Erectrophobe and be like, oh, that butterfly isn't found on that continent, and like make all these like snarky remarks, and so most people get it wrong.

It's not well, you got me with the vampire butterflies, Yes, for a minute there. So Julie wants to know how long do butterflies live and what does a day in the life of a butterfly look like.

Oh, it's a good question. So most butterflies will live maybe around two weeks, you could say, and their life if they're male, it'll be you know, getting some good resources. Lots of times it'll be defending a territory. Some we'll just kind of hang out in a patch of flowers or hang out side of a tree and kind of defend that and waiting for a female to come by. And for female, same thing, she's gonna be drinking nectar.

So wait, they have like a horny swagger.

Basically, it's like they spray too much axon in the morning and they're like, I got this.

And espress, so who wants to do it? Who wants to do it?

And then the females kind of just float around. They're like these beautiful little things that are just a little bit floppier up in the air, a little bit more like a cartoon butterfly you would see. And generally they're just kind of saying, okay, is there a male that's gonna approach me? Or let's say I'm regular lay eggs. They're smelling the air with their antennae to figure out where is the host plant that I need that specific

Two weeks they got a lifespan two.

Generally two weeks, and then you have some exceptions, especially migratory species like the monarchs, the ones that overwinter in Mexico. They live for months and they can travel super far, and it's it's pretty cool.

I just went there and you posted video and there were millions of monarchs. So look for the video called the Butterfly Migration on Phil's YouTube channel, The Jungle Diaries. So did Phil loose his mind? Spoiler alert?

I lost my mind. I think it's about ten million monarchs per acre, okay, something like that, and it was insane.

That's crazy, ten million monarchs per acre.

It was so there's so many butterflies around that it was loud. You would hear this like like this this rustling of you know, a single butterfly flies by you and flaps its wing. You won't hear that. But if you put ten million around you, all of a sudden, all those micro noises add up into like filling the entire forest with this like whispering sound. You can hear it, but that's no wind. That is the sound of millions of butterflies flying around me right now, And it's probably

Now is that all those are during the winter months or right before spreading?

Okay, winter months, so basically November two February is the peak, I would say.

So like, get your tickets for the Mexican Butterfly Forest, like now.

Yeah, I'm actually going to be leading trips out there next year. So if you guys want to come, just follow me and I'll be posting about it.

So Phil and another friend of ours, doctor Jason Goldman, lead trips through Atlas Obscuris. So follow Phil on social media, go to his web site in the show notes, or check at Less Obscura. It may not be booking yet, but keep checking back. They'll announce it. Heather Crowther wants to know. I know touching butterfly wings can really hurt them, but why what's happening? Is it the oils on our hands reacting with something? What's happening when you touch a butterfly without consent?

Not a whole lot. What So a lot of people out there, will you know, if they see an image of me, like holding a butterfly by its wings or something, they'll be like, oh, you're killing it, and that's that's

I didn't know that. I always felt like it was like if you touch a fly, like it will find a corner. It will be like see you later, you've killed it.

Yeah, not true, not true.

Jason Shirley wants to know what's the largest butterfly ever recorded.

The Queen Alexandra's birdwing. Okay, they found down in like Papua New Guinea in certain areas there, and I want to say it's the females have like a eleven inch wingspan something like that. It's huge. And the first entomologist who went down there to collect this thing, they didn't have giant butterfly nets because they fly way up high, so the only way they could collect them is with the shotgun. So they would take a shotgun, aim it up and then bang, shoot this thing out of the

Oh my god.

A queen Queen Alexandra's bird wing, Oh my god, which is a very endangered species, and it's one of the few that collecting it has made it endangered. Generally, there's so many butterflies that go around habitat destruction is the big thing, and collecting it is not really a big deal. But some of those they are protected species. A lot of the bird wings because they're so big and really beautiful.

So there caterpillars. Are they the size of hot talks?

Yeah? Probably brought worst, Okay, I'm sure they are huge. There are some big caterpillars out there.

That brings me to a personal question about our own collection. It's bad that I have a butterfly collection and dead butterflies that I have purchased.

It's not, okay, it depends on you want to make sure it's the right species. There are some that are protected, some that are endangered in the wild. You definitely don't want to have those for that, I think if you're doing it right and you're spreading appreciation, okay, that is okay. A lot of these are actually bread in facilities and they're not like collected in the wild because while butterflies

Okay, Lexi Fitter says, I've heard that butterfly bushes are now considered invasive and are bad for butterflies. Why is this ps I live in Michigan.

So she's talking about bootleo, which is a butterfly bush, and that was the one maybe you know, in the nineties early two thousands, everybody was like, plant this plant because it's a big bush. It has these really big hours on it that are just really pretty colored. And I planted a lot when I was a kid. And that's a tricky one because they are not native. There are native options that you can go for that do

John Worster in Casey Handmler want to know, essentially, how do some butterflies fly so long? Are they just on the wind currents or are they really that bad ass?

It's a little bit of wind current, a little bit of bad ass, And every butterfly the thorax will be a little bit different. So the thorax is where they keep all their big muscles for flight and for walking around. So some butterflies, you grab the thorax and you're like that thing is buff, like they like they work out and you'll really feel the strength of these flight muscles.

Oh my god. Maybe they had some plant nectar. And then they're like, I mean, you know, fly a couple thousand miles by. Yeah, that's so bad ass. It's pretty cool how they're able to pull all this off. Like evolution is crazy because like predators put so much pressure.

On things and just freak accidents put so much pressure on things to be a really efficient machine as an organism. So butterflies they may look pretty, but like they they're efficient and they're good flyers and they got they got a lot of interesting things about them.

Have you taken anything away existentially or philosophically from butterflies, like about change, or about about not being ashamed to smelp who. I don't know anything you.

Know, but I think you know the metamorphosis analogy or metaphor that's not my thing. But for me, it's it's all about like keeping that curiosity enjoy that I had as a seven year old catching butterfly, and like being like not ashamed at all to have that same excitement as a full grown adult and sure in high school and a little bit in college, like it wasn't like the cool thing to do to show off your butterfly collection, but I was just like it doesn't matter, Like I love this stuff and nature.

Is so.

Cool, and there's so much to learn, Like we know probably the most about the monarch butterfly and the cabbage white, but we still have so many questions about those two species, and imagine all the other eighteen thousand that are out there. So I just think, if anything, I've just learned, like just keep that joy alive and that curiosity alive, because nature really has some magnificent things, even if they happen to be really pretty, Like I don't care they're awesome.

What about what's the crappiest thing about your job? What's the hardest or most disappointing or most arduous.

Uh, it's a mix because I used to be more like official scientist and now a more science communicator, and so part of it. The travel is amazing, But there was a point where after living two years in the jungle, where I was like, I should probably be around other humans again, and so finding that balance, and I've seen some feeld biologists who go a little bit too far and end up because it's kind of addicting. You have this adrenaline rush, this idea that you can make a discovery,

Oh?

Yeah? And then also just like freelance life. I think that's the only other thing a lot of people have.

More.

There are not a lot of jobs and science, and so I saw a lot of people going for the same thing of going to be a professor or research scientist, and I was like, Okay, well, I'm going to take a little left turn here and still have my mind stimulated, still get the same opportunities to travel for science, but

I love that. I asked you the scariest thing in the jungle was, and you neglected to tell me that you've been held up at gunpoint twice.

Oh yeah. Humans are also very scary in the jungle too. Generally, you just as long as you communicate and and don't go in there as like American savior, like conservation is about working with the people there. It's not about working just with the animal like. It's all about working with the people and so building good relationships and using what they figured out over a long time.

Were you able to negotiate your way out of that?

Yeah? We were. One time it was the government Venezuela. I was under Javaz. They weren't very friendly. They stopped our bus, took the three of us off. There's like two or three truck fulls of dudes with machine guns and they like put us against the bus and patted us down. And I think it was kind of just a bluff because they track your every move there, like everything you do you have to put in your passport information and they weren't very fond of Americans back then.

Oh way, Beck, Yeah, So Robert Baden Powell did indeed found the Boy Scouts and was indeed all up in some espionage, as detailed in his book My Adventures of a Spy. That's just straight up he was straight up a spy. So he wrote, quote, carrying this book and a butterfly net in my hand, I was above all suspicion to anyone who met me on the lonely mountain side. So thanks for the advice, ma, dude, I will go do that. What No, I.

Don't recommend people doing it now because I'm not like ruined scientists access to these places that we want to go and study. So don't mess with science. Let's just yeah, let that be in the past. And then the other guys they were just kind of really drunk, and that was challenging, but we figured it out.

Oh my god, what's the best thing about what you do? What do you love the most about? Butterflies? About your work?

I Mean, one part that I love is just being able to go to places and have access to things that there's no other job that gives you that opportunity. You go to some really weird places, you really get to go behind the scenes and areas, and that's irreplaceable. I mean, I've pretty much never had an office job my entire life, and that's great and I love that. And then the other part is what it does to

It's exciting, I mean. And to start helping discover species at nineteen, like, that's got to be a little bit addictive too.

Probably right for sure, for sure, And I have huge respect for the people out there who dedicate their entire career to that. People kind of forget that we still need a catalog, what life is out there. We have so much work to do insects alone, there's probably at least another million, if not nine million species out there to be discovered, millions left to be done, and they're everywhere,

And now you're getting married this year, I am. Are you going to have butterflies be represented at all during your wedding?

Definitely, So we're gonna instead of flower girls, we're having butterfly girls. It's a little butterfly wings everywhere. And then for our place settings, we're gonna do some cool stuff with like giving on native seeds just to get people oriented. Yeah, there's so many ways you can you can incorporate this stuff into your life, and so we just kind of want to show people like, this is what's important to us.

Oh that makes me so habby. I was wondering. I was like, I wonder if those weddings getting involved bucks at all.

Yeah, I kind of want to get some shoes with bugs on them.

I know, I think you should. I think you deserve it. Yeah, we'll see some butterfly slippers.

Yeah, why not.

I did look up some fly shoes for Phil, and I found some cool Gucci Bug loafers that cost a grand and then also some swayed butterfly loafers on eBay for like one hundred bucks. So if anyone has a Gucci hookup for these loafers, holler at Phil online. Wouldn't that be great? Come on, come on someone right? Okay, another update. His wonderful fiance and now wife, Celia, got him the Gucci Bug loafers as a wedding gift, and the ceremony was gorgeous. I danced so much at their reception.

Lithology andology, oology, entology, mythology, seriology, selenology.

There's a butterfly time