Hello All,
Cocoons can move. I didn’t know this and it was not fun to find out. Today I learned how to put them on styrofoam boards so that they can hatch. I get that caterpillars seem kinda gnarly, but dang, cocoons are downright terrifying. The way we place them on these boards is by using a little dab of hot glue. It’s kinda like being hot glued by the ends of your hair, I’d like to think. We can’t really know because unfortunately there isn’t a lot of research about how butterflies can feel. Actually, there isn’t a lot of research on them, period. It’s really quite interesting, and maybe I mentioned it in my last post, but for the most part scientists get more funding for butterflies that are the most popular.
We mostly just glued the cocoons today and worked with them, but I guess that gives me time to continue talking about the other things I’ve done while being an intern. A really fun thing to do is “Butterfly Rescue,” where if there are butterflies in back rooms or trapped on the windowsills in the dome, we take them out to make sure they eat. The morphos (ones with eyes on one side, and blues, purples, or grey-blues on the other side) much prefer old fruits and a weird mixture of mushy bananas and a little dark beer. The other butterflies prefer nectar and more liquids. The museum tries to make the areas within the plates particularly red in the sea of green because of the idea that butterflies really prefer red. I’d really like to look into what colors they actually prefer, because as I mentioned before, it’s really not something well known or studied.
As always, I enjoy working with my winged, flitty puppies. Working with them is certainly the start to a great week. ‘Til the next one!
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