The butterflies love this Siam Weed bush.
The biggest ones are the migrating monarchs. The slightly smaller ones are queens who mimic the monarchs. The little brown and orange ones are snouts, who are roaming through the area because somewhere got too crowded and they’re looking for new spaces. There’s also a painted lady and a red admiral in there somewhere.
[description: a video moving back and forth over a large patch of a bush with small, blue, pom-pom like bunches of flowers, occasionally zooming in. At least 20 butterflies of varying types are fluttering about and landing on the flowers. Someone in the background is sarcastically pointing out that the butterflies might like this bush.]
today i found out that when monarch butterflies migrate south for the winter, all the ones that go across the middle of lake superior suddenly stop going south and go west for five miles and then continue south. which really freaked scientists out cos like What is in the Middle of Lake Superior what do Butterflies know that We Dont Is This The End Times etc. anyway turns out about a hundred million years ago there was a mountain there and the butterflies still think they gotta fly around it. classic butterflies
combine this with the fact that caterpillars literally turn into bug soup in their crystallis, meaning there is no central nervous system to carry over any information, but they seem to retain memories from caterpillar life regardless…
and it brings up a lot of questions about what kind of information can even be stored in genes, like… does genetic memory really exist? what does this mean for humankind? could a race of people develop an instinctual memory of the land like this? are there people whose bones tell the stories of ancient mountains? what about my people? is the diaspora something that can be felt among every one of us? are we all the living cumulation of hundreds of thousands of ghosts?
i am simultaneously fascinated and frightened by this. classic butterflies indeed
Chemera and Mosaic Insects Part 2-Butterflies and Moths
A chimera (also spelled chimaera) (from the creature Chimera in Greek mythology) is a single organism composed of cells from different zygotes. This can result in male and female organs, two blood types, or subtle variations in form. Animal chimeras are produced by the merger of multiple fertilized eggs. If the different cells have emerged from the same zygote, the organism is called a mosaic. Chimeras are formed from at least four parent cells (two fertilised eggs or early embryos fused together). Each population of cells keeps its own character and the resulting organism is a mixture of tissues. Chimeras can often breed, but the fertility and type of offspring depends on which cell line gave rise to the ovaries or testes; varying degrees of intersex differences may result if one set of cells is genetically female and another genetically male. A gynandromorph is an organism that contains both male and female characteristics, authorities say. The term gynandromorph, from Greek “gyne” female and “andro” male, is mainly used in the field of entomology, though it has also been observed in arthropods and birds as well. Another way that chimærism can occur in animals is by organ transplantation, giving one individual tissues that developed from two genomes. For example, a bone marrow transplant can change someone’s blood type. Normally, chimærism is not visible on casual inspection; however, it has been detected in the course of proving parentage and may be more common than was believed before the advent of DNA testing.
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