It's O.K. To Make A Butterfly Collection
Making a butterfly collection is a hobby that
many adults fondly remember; it started them on a lifelong career in the sciences, entomology or lepidoptery. Don't like the idea of killing a butterfly? Check out this site for an eye opening story on butterfly conservation in New Guinea: http://www.aa6g.org/Butterflies/pngletter.html It is NOT a crime to NAB A butterfly or two, as long as you avoid taking the reproducing females for specimens, and that you do not take more than a very few males of anyone species. Mother Nature will actually benefit if you have a captured female lay eggs for you, you rear her young and then release into the environment all but one or two of the resulting adults ( and keeping one or two for yourself). In the wild, only one or two eggs would survive to become a reproducing adult. If you raise the young, maybe 95% will survive to become adults. Nature will be happy and so will you. Butterflies for the most part are not disappearing due to overcollecting, they are disappearing due to urban sprawl, clearing of vital host and nectar plants, insecticides, idiotic laws made by CITES and governments' Fishy and Gamey Depts. that do not allow the cultivation of endangered species of butterflies. The legal farming of Birdwings in New Guinea produces high quality specimens for collectors, yet allowing the wild populations to increase, assuring that they will be there for generations to come. These dodo's must have flunked Biology 101 as they do not seem to realize that the reproductive biology of insects is quite different than the reproductive biology of endangered birds or endangered mammals. A female elephant can only produce ONE baby every 5 or 6 years. A single female butterfly can produce up to a 1000 eggs in only 5 or 6 days ! A well curated butterfly collection is a legacy to future generations , a testimony of what once was but exists no longer. If you wanted to see a stuffed DODO bird from Mauritius, where would you go? The British Museum (of Natural History), the American Museum of Natural History in Neuve York? Nope! The correct answer is : Nowhere! What was once a proud race was destroyed in span of only two hundred years or so, now reduced to only a handful of feathers, a skeleton and a dried foot and head --- all that is left. If you haven't done it yet, go back to the top of this paragraph and read the link on Birdwing Butterfly Conservation
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>>>ATTENTION ANIMAL ACTIVIST NUTCASES<<<
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Animal activist nutcases and their ilk-- Do Not Proceed Any Further On This Site!!! Explicit photo's of dead specimens and mounted mounted butterflys are graphically shown ! PLEASE LEAVE THIS SITE NOW . For the rest of you nice people please enjoy and learn how to do a most beautiful, fascinating and enjoyable hobby.
How to Mount a Butterfly
This site will show you how easy it is to mount dried, preserved butterflies or fresh specimens. If you have questions or problems, please feel free to e-mail me at butterflyzoo@webtv.net
How To Clean or De-Grease A Specimen
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Get These Items Ready Before You Start
You will need a preserved or fresh speci
men, a bottle of cheap gin (make sure that you use drinking alcohol. DO NOT USE other types of alcohol (i.e., isopropyl, methanol, ethanol) they can stain or damage specimens) , entomological pins, glass headed dress maker pins, stamp collector tongs, glassine (from a stamp collectors' shoppe or the post office), a mounting board and a ziploc baggie or a clean, plastic deli dish and cover. You can make your own mounting board from strips of corrugated cardboard, or by obtaining professional style boards and entomological pins
available from BioQuipe located in beautiful downtown Gardena Ca http://www. bioquip.com
Close-Ups
Upper left, a dried butterfly specimen, Ento pins and cheap gin
Relaxing the Specimen
If you are using a dried
specimen, it is important to properly "relax" it. If you try to open a dried bug, it will crumble. Take a clean deli container, put a folded piece of paper towel in the bottom. Using your tongs, pick up the specimen and place it in the bottom of the dish. Add a shot of vodka or gin (gin smells better) to soak the paper towels.. Make sure the shot does not go into yourself until you have finished mounting! Many specimens placed on top of the paper towels will be "relaxed" or softened up within 24 hours. If you are in a hurry, pour a few drops of gin directly on the thorax of the specimen--this will soften some specimens in 15 mintutes or less. For stubborn specimens, you can use a fine-bore hypodermic needles to inject a few drops of gin inside the thorax. You can also use, water, but that takes days to soften up the bug. Gin softens it in 15 minutes, kills unwanted organisms on your specimens, and will dry completely in 24 hours. Never use your fingers to pick up the specimen. , When you can manipulate the wings (with the tongs) so they feel like they have 'lifelike" movement, take the specimen out of the relaxing chambre and it is ready to mount.