Bread and Butterfly

[Dragonfly]

I'd never suspected that butterflies also like bread, but some of them apparently do. We'd put some crusts of self-baked bread that had become too dark on a feeding table for the birds. It attracted more butterflies than birds, however. Here a Vanessa atalanta puts its tongue into the bread:

[Barbara Branden]

Dragonfly, I've done everything but stand on my head, and I still can't make out what I'm looking at. I can see the bread. I can see some butterflies on. . . something. But I can't identify the "something." Is that an eye near the top of it? And what are those feelers? It looks as if the "something" is sitting on the "something or other with feelers."

Please explain.

Barbara

[Dragonfly]

Barbara, it's just one butterfly. The large dark triangle with a few bright spots is the underside of its wings (which are folded together). The two "feelers" at the left are its antennae, which end in its head (the pointed structure), the "wire" that is bent at a 90° angle and disappears into the bread is its tongue, and below you see three of its legs. Do you see it now?

In the meantime I've probably discovered the secret of its strange behavior: I heard that the bread was made with an apple, I suppose the butterflies are enjoying these. It's still remarkable as these apple pieces are the very small and hardly visible. Apparently those butterflies have excellent noses... It's a strange view to see those butterflies enthusiastically attacking those bread crusts instead of all the nice flowers nearby.

[Dragonfly]

Here is another picture in which you can see the upper side of the wings. Unfortunately this picture is not sharp. If you now still can't see it, I suggest that you really try looking at it standing on your head...

[jenright]

Just so no one misses dragonfly's witty allusion:

"Look on the branch above your head, and you'll find a Snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy. Crawling at your feet, you may observe a Bread-and-butter-fly. Its wings are thin slices of bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head a lump of sugar....' "

Alice Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

[Barbara Branden]

This is clearly a giant conspiracy to drive me mad. I can see NOTHING of what's been described.

Barbara

[Dragonfly]

Barbara, I can understand that it must be frustrating for you. Your experience is in fact an interesting illustration of the fact that there is no such thing as a direct perception of reality. Usually our perception mechanism works seamlessly and apparently reliably (we don't bump every moment into the walls - well, most of us don't...), creating the "user illusion", but with less familiar input the automatic integrating mechanism can get stuck. Even when you're told where everything is, you don't perceive the thing, you see only some pattern of colors that doesn't make sense to you.

I know how frustrating this can be. I've described elsewhere the "dome illusion": in some cases when I look at the moon through my telescope and the lighting seems to come from "below", I see suddenly no hollow craters but some kind of domes, even when I "try" to see craters, while I know these must be craters, but I can't get those damn domes away! (There are examples of this illusion on the Internet, but for some reason I find them not as convincing as when I look through the telescope myself. Looking at those photos I find it not so difficult to switch between the two different perceptions.)

I'll try to steer your automatic integration system for perception into the right direction by presenting some images of butterflies in similar poses, which are probably easier to "get". The first one is another Vanessa Atalanta, probably an old one, as its wings are damaged and have lost much of its color. Next to it is the original picture, somewhat brightened to make the wing structure better visible, and rotated for an easier comparison.

           

Next two pictures of a Gonepteryx rhamni (Brimstone Butterfly, the Dutch name "Citroenvlinder" is the equivalent of "Lemon Butterfly"). The resemblance of its wings to plant leaves is possibly not accidental.

Finally two Lycaenidae in a gracious pas de deux:

I hope you can see now all the butterflies!

[JennaW]

These are beautiful pictures! I'm in the market for a camera that gives good colors and is excellent at macro shots-- what camera do you use?

[Judith]

I can understand Barbara's frustration, too. I've had that experience occasionally while driving at night and seeing something up ahead that just won't resolve itself into something recognizable, but that seems to be a disjointed jumble of lights or reflections. "What the heck IS that?" I wonder, and slow down until I recognize it. It's downright creepy. Nothing wrong whatsoever with my vision, either -- no astigmatism, etc. Just a natural result of not having all the data we have while driving during the day.

Great butterfly photos, by the way. I have a Canon digital SLR and enjoy taking animal photos, but I've never taken pictures of anything smaller than a frog.

Judith

[Dragonfly]

I'm in the market for a camera that gives good colors and is excellent at macro shots-- what camera do you use?

These are made with a Sony DSC-V3 with a close-up lens attachment, except the pas de deux which was made with my old Nikon F3 with a 10 cm macro objective. Three years ago I decided to boy a digital camera, more or less as a plaything which perhaps might be useful for taking pictures through my telescope, as you immediately can see the results. I bought a small 5 megapixel Sony Cyber-shot camera. The quality of the pictures turned out to be much better than I'd expected, however. I could get perfect pictures on A4 format (21 * 30 cm) with my Canon I 965 photoprinter, they were amazingly good. So I was quickly converted to digital photography. I missed however some of the options of my Nikon, like the possibility of macro shots and manual settings (there were some manual settings possible, but these were rather awkward). Therefore I bought last year the DSC-V3. It still doesn't have all the possibilities of a reflex camera like exchangeable objectives, but with the close-up lens you can still get nice pictures; not extreme macro, but good enough for most insects. Here are a few more examples:

[Chris Grieb]

Thank you for those pictures. I think photos like those are ART.

[Judith]

Truly beautiful. Thank you!

Judith

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I am a HUGE fan of human competence, even when dealing with bread and butterflies and other bugs.

Wonderful, Dragonfly. Simply wonderful.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] the "wire" that is bent at a 90° angle and disappears into the bread is its tongue [...].

Proboscis. It's a feeding tube, not constructed like the vertebrate tongue.

The photos are INCREDIBLE.

Have you seen the movie Microcosm? If not, I recommend trying

to see it. I bet you'd love it. It was filmed at the scale level of an

insect-sized world, using some sort of fiber optics photographic

technique.

Ellen

___

[Victor Pross]

Dragonfly: "I can understand that it must be frustrating for you. Your experience is in fact an interesting illustration of the fact that there is no such thing as a direct perception of reality."

What?

I supppse that explains why my pencil disappears when I submerge it in a cup of tar.

But yes, nice skill displayed in taking those photos.

Victor

Edited August 25, 2006 by Victor Pross

[Barbara Branden]

Dragonfly, thanks so much for your help. I can see, without any difficulty, the pictures you posted after the first one. And I can. . . almost. . . make sense of the first one.

I have an idea that my problem was not simply that I got "stuck" in my original perception. I tend to be rather unobservant -- "unaware" is probably the more exact word -- about physical reality. I'll ilustrate this. I have a good friend who is an artist. She and I once had occasion to walk through a room neither of us had seen before. Later, she mentioned her reaction to the room, describing the furniture, the colors, the designs, etc. I was astonished by how many physical details she had noticed and retained. I could not have told her what the room looked like in any sort of detail, not even the colors, nor could I have described a single piece of furniture -- but I had a clear memory of the mood, the "feel," so to speak, of the room, that is, that it was a cheerful, sunlit sort of place. Ever since then, because what seemed to my friend and me to be simply our perceptions were in fact so different, I've been fascinated by what people observe, that is, by what seems to them worth noticing and remembering.

Another example of this phenomenon. A friend once asked me to tell him exactly what had happened on an evening that he knew had been important to me; there had been a discussion among a group of people, of whom I was one, that had significantly effected my future actions. I said, "Let me think about it for a moment." What I did in order to clearly and exactly recall the events and the discussion of that evening was, I later realized, not what many other people would have done in an attempt to recall. Some people might have pictured the room and the people in it on that particular evening; their means of recall was visual, and the visual allowed them to call up the other elements of the evening. Others might have re-heard in their minds some of the conversation; their means of recall was aural, and the aural allowed them to call up the other elements of the evening. One man, I later learned to my amazement, would recall an event by calling up the scents of the evening -- the perfume one of the woman wore, or the odor of the flowers. I, in distinction to these methods, turned inward to recapture what had been the emotional feel of the evening to me, and by that means I was able to recall who was in the room, who participated in the discussion, what was said and by whom. What's interesting to me is that I took my own method of recalling as self-evidently the way it had to be done, and, apparently, everyone else, using different method of recall, feels that his or her method is self-evidently the way it must be done.

Dragonfly, because of the beauty of your photographs and the loving physical detail they contain, I'd guess that your means of remembering would primarily be visual. Am I correct?

Barbara

[Ellen Stuttle]

I have a good friend who is an artist. She and I once had occasion to walk through a room neither of us had seen before.

[Question: Why won't this post with a block around the quote??? I tried several times. I hate not being able to tell where the quote ends. Is it that if you quote more than one section from a post the block insert doesn't work?]

Was the friend Joan B.?

What's interesting to me is that I took my own method of recalling as self-evidently the way it had to be done, and, apparently, everyone else, using different method of recall, feels that his or her method is self-evidently the way it must be done.

I think we all are very much prone to doing this, Barbara, and not just with methods of recall, with methods of thinking, of feeling. The differences in the ways humans see, think of, feel is vaster, I believe, than most of us have begun to suspect.

Ellen

PS: Dragonfly, please notice my post a few above in which I asked if you've ever seen the movie "Microcosm," photographed from an insect's scale of existence. I love that movie, and think you would love it too. One detail which quite fascinates me is the final scene: a "creature" who seems to me like a creature embodying all the veiled mystery of an Egyptian goddess emerging from webs of enveloping "fabric." And then the "creature" flies away, as the end of the movie. And what is the creature? A mosquito. If you knew what torments mosquitoes have caused for my existence!!! (In a crowd of a thousand, with one mosquito present, I would be the one sought out, I'm sure, my blood chemistry is so attractive to those ghastly insects. But I can't ever quite think of mosquitoes again in the same total-enmity way, having watched that final scene.)

Ellen

___

[Dragonfly]

Dragonfly, because of the beauty of your photographs and the loving physical detail they contain, I'd guess that your means of remembering would primarily be visual. Am I correct?

I'm not sure... The way I remember seems to be different for different occasions, sometimes it's mainly visual, but at other times it's mainly the content of a discussion etc. For example, I'm particularly bad at remembering faces, which sometimes can be embarrassing as I don't recognize people in the street, who think I cut them, while I just don't see them! This has several times led to unpleasant situations. My wife can make a remark about the clothes someone was wearing the day before, while I wouldn't have the foggiest idea what someone was wearing 5 minutes after he or she had left me. Such things just don't interest me. On the other hand I have a fairly good memory of what I've read once. So I think you can't say that my memory is primary visual, at least not more than with most people.

[Dragonfly]

Ellen: no I don't know Microcosm. It sounds fascinating, I'll watch out for it.

[Mike Hardy]

I think we all are very much prone to doing this, Barbara, and not just with methods of recall, with methods of thinking, of feeling. The differences in the ways humans see, think of, feel is vaster, I believe, than most of us have begun to suspect.

L.N. Subtle, I'm glad two sea your back from Yurp.

To everyone else, and L.N. too:

I have a confession: I like things to be simple. That's probably why I prefer

Unix to Microsoft Windows and to Macintosh. All these numerous clickable

things and menus on this web site annoy me. Am I the only one?

Where's the most appropriate place in this complicated site to post a book review?

(At some point I may opine at some length on Craig Ferguson's novel, _Between_

_the_Bridge_and_the_River_. Short review: I liked it and I'm looking forward to the

sequel. It's largely about power lust in religious movements, and sectarian

strife. Lots of puns and word-based humor. One Latin-based pun that L.N. Subtle

will like (maybe?) and I sent an email to the author telling him that one was pretty

good, for a Protestant.) -- Mike Hardy

[Kat]

Hi Mike,

If you would like to post a review of a book by someone not featured in the Corners of Insight, the best place to post it is in The Library. Just start a Topic called "Book Review: The Title and Author of the Book" and proceed like a normal post.

As far as making the site interface simplier, you may prefer using the low-fi version of it. Scroll down to the very bottom of the screen and click on the words "Low-Fi Version" it should be about dead center (between the skin selector and the date/time). You will be able to view OL without all the jazz and the low-fi interface is designed to use less resources and would probably work well on a Treo or Blackberry.

Kat

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mike,

Where's the most appropriate place in this complicated site to post a book review?

The Library

That's for most books. Older Branden book reviews are being posted in the Branden Corner by Roger Bissell as a special project because that seemed like a good place for the older stuff. A couple other book reviews or so are in special places because of their themes, but they all (from what I remember) started in the Library and were moved later.

I look forward to your review.

Michael

PS: (I just saw that Kat answered you too.)