11. Butterfly
Like many animals, bats have gotten a bad reputation. Maybe the blood connection has something to do with that, but people should pick on larger creatures. Contrary to some opinion, they aren’t blind. They’re nocturnal and one of very few mammals that fly. Since bats leave the cave at night for food and don’t have night vision goggles, doing so in the pitch black poses great challenges, so they must have truly keen senses. One thing they are blessed with echolocation, a type of sonar. Dolphins also use echolocation and their use of it matches that of bats. Also adopting it are swiftlets from Southeast Asia, oilbirds of South America and some humans.
Bats send out a signal and another comes back. They can distinguish between the two waves and thus avoid smashing into walls. I don’t know how they capture mosquitoes, but if they’re intelligent enough with the sonar stuff, they won’t go hungry. Female bats that are nursing consume twice their weight in food or more each day. Males and the other females eat about half their weight. They all digest food quickly, requiring plenty of nourishment. Their diet consists mostly of insects, plants and nectar. Some eat frogs, but are smart enough to avoid the deadly arrowhead ones. Some of them are fruit eating bats. Many devour arthropods – spiders, krill and fiddler crabs. A few bats prey on fish and indulge.
Besides echolocation, bats also use heat detection and smell. They have quite a few tools for moving around at night. Bats are great contributors to the environment. They devour various types of insects – I’ve already mentioned mosquitoes – without which picnics would be fraught with pests. We could bring out the repellent or resort to bug zappers, but chemicals do harm to the earth and humans. Zappers don’t discriminate, killing beneficial insects and even small birds. Ridding an area of some of the mosquito population may also prevent the spread of viral diseases such as encephalitis and West Nile virus. Fruit eating bats help by dispersing seeds, which can later provide more fruit. Bats aren’t evil, but an essential part of the ecosystem. Besides caves, they live in trees, bat houses and even the homes of some people. They have the ability to squeeze through very narrow openings. That may be why they’re in your attic.
The blue morpho is another designation for the blue butterfly. A 2004 movie that I highly recommend is La Mariposa Azul, whose title translates to the name of that species. Starring William Hurt as Alan Osborne, it is the story of Pete Carlton, a ten-year old boy diagnosed with cancer. One of his wishes is to go to the rain forest to find the blue morpho. After hearing Osborne talk, he tries to convince the scientist to take him to the rain forest. Alan mentions that it may be too late in the year, as well as the fact that he doesn’t handle children very well.
Eventually, Alan, Pete and his mother, Teresa, embark on Pete’s dream. The movie is a magical journey of hope and redemption, and you’ll have to watch it to see if they find the blue morpho. La Mariposa Azul is based on a true story, and it might change your life.
In the early twenty first century, I noticed a beautiful flying lime-green creature resting on the front of my house. It was a Luna moth, which has a wingspan of almost five inches, making it one of the largest North American moths. Butterflies and moths both belong to the order Lepidoptera, but the latter is nocturnal, while butterflies thrive in the daytime and are larger and more colorful. The covering of the pupa of the butterfly is a chrysalis while that of the moth is a cocoon. These are some of the differences.
When I lived downstate, I had to put up with devouring gypsy moth caterpillars, who could make a summer oak tree appear to be a winter one. If you sat out on your deck or porch and these critters were in branches above you, blessings above would shower down on you and you’d have to shower or at least change your clothes. You might be able to stop their advance up the trunk of the trees by circling it with some grease mechanism. Fortunately the caterpillars weren’t around every year, but that could easily change.
I encountered a friendlier and more helpful invasion not that long ago when my sunroom was filled with ladybugs. These flying insects are a thorn in the sides of aphids, who love roses. Years before that day, I had some roses, but they didn’t survive. I transported the ladybugs outside via my vacuum cleaner and they were free to get rid of other pests. Some bugs look like ladybugs. These imposters are called Asian lady beetles and they may do more harm than good.
Plants and pollinators need each other. Without the latter, many plants just couldn’t survive and vice versa. Pollinators gather nectar from the plants and in turn allow for growth of plants. Pollinators include bats, bees, flies, wasps, butterflies, moths, beetles, ants and birds, especially hummingbirds, honeyeaters and sunbirds. These aren’t the only pollinators, without which humans would find food hard to come by. Men, women and children may be able to live with the fruits of better living through chemistry, but that effort has failed miserably when it comes to flavor and good health. Genetically Modified Organisms aren’t good for anyone. I should add these words to the four in italics: but not for long.
Besides performing essential work, pollinators are extremely intelligent. Just consider some of migrations of birds. They don’t all travel from the arctic to the tropics and back every year, but many manage to fly enormous distances without getting lost. Winged migration, a 2001 documentary covering four years, follows the migration of birds traveling hundreds of miles to warmer climates in the fall and then back to cooler places each spring. To reach their goal, they use no special compass, only that of nature and the stars. Flying over water poses problems finding food, but somehow they manage.
More recently, a PBS program featured a six part series called, Earthflight. Airing in September of 2013, the journey covered Africa, Europe, South America, North America, Asia and Australia. Using sophisticated technology with cameras mounted on the fliers, the views gave us a breathtaking bird’s-eye view of the trips – what did you expect? Once more these birds can only be described as amazing.
Even more incredible are hummingbirds, that I mentioned earlier, who have to consume enormous amounts of food. To travel across the Gulf of Mexico takes about twenty hours. Maybe they swoop down for seafood, but I doubt it. How do they survive for almost a day without any food? They also find their way on their own and without any American Automobile Association maps. I think the right word to describe this migration is miraculous.
As incredible as these small birds are, there are smaller creatures that are more impressive. Because of the cold winters, monarch butterflies move south to Mexico or friendlier places, weather-wise, in the United States. They are the only insects who migrate each year to a warmer climate 2,500 miles away. They do this because of the food they need. Monarchs survive on milkweed plants and also get nutrients from flowers. They have to return in the spring for the same reason. The migration starts in October of each year, but might begin sooner if the cold hits ahead of schedule. On arrival, they hibernate in the same place every year, even though they are not the same butterflies.
Early in the year, monarch butterflies depart hibernation and search for a mate. After this is done, they lay their eggs on milkweed in March or April. In less than a week, larvae or caterpillars will appear. The caterpillars will be full-grown adults in two weeks, soon entering the Chrysalis stage. Then the butterfly appears, living only two to six weeks, but will repeat the process to create another butterfly. In all there will be four stages of monarchs, but the last is the one that will migrate. It will survive from six to eight months. All in all, a monarch can live from two weeks to eight months.
Many of the pollinators may not be to your liking, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary in the big picture. A few creatures are hated, some even feared. As you know, most animals move out of your way and will only respond if you threaten them or their family. I can’t say I blame them. Besides what has already been mentioned, the hate list includes bees, worms, ants, scorpions, mosquitoes, hornets, wasps and snakes, who feed on small rodents – another not so likeable group. Those slimy crawling animals have been known to devour small deer. They can skip breakfast, lunch and dinner for quite a few days. Specifically, a rattlesnake can swallow a mouse in September, crawl into his den for the winter and manage without a meal until the following June. Alan Boone inquired of Mojave Dan – more on these two later – about why rattlesnakes don’t bother Native Americans. There seemed to be a gentlemen’s agreement between them. It had to do with respect and attitude. Native Americans have no fear of crawling creatures and don’t set out to massacre any snake they see. White people seemed set on killing every kind of snake, not just rattlers.
Spiders freak people out but they devour many bugs that we’d rather not see around. For those with arachnophobia, you’ll be assured to know that an acre of land has about 80,000 spiders. Most animals, whether loved or hated, are integral in the role of prey or predator, the former being someone’s lunch and the latter ridding the area of pests.
People usually freak out when an ant or two is found in their abode. One day Allen Boone saw a few families of these tiny creatures in his kitchen and on the porch – maybe it was an entire nation. Boone talked to them saying he wasn’t sure they belonged in his home. He was nice about it although he did mention his ability to banish them all very quickly. He was calm and understanding of them in his talk. He left to go to a comedy theater. When he returned, all traces of the ants were nowhere to be found. Since that time, those tiny, industrious creatures have never bothered him.
As far as scorpions go, they all have venom but only about three percent of those creatures possess deadly poisons for humans. This species goes back more than 400,000 years. They feed on insects and their eggs, spiders, termites, small snakes, lizards and rodents. On the Internet, you can find a list of what to feed your pet scorpion. What would we do without the World Wide Web? If you’re still not relieved, you can move to Antarctica, where they can’t be found – yet.
You may not want to read the next two paragraphs if you’re about to have dinner, especially if it’s spaghetti and meatballs. Scientists have found that there were fewer allergies with people having worms in their bodies. It’s weird, makes one cringe and I have one word for it: yuck! I saw this revelation in the summer of 2014 on the CBC program, The Nature of Things. Fortunately David Suzuki and others felt that there was a better alternative. If a child was allergic to peanuts, small amounts were presented and gradually increased over time, under strict supervision. This worked in many cases and a child who avoided peanuts started to like them and not have side effects. This gradual method pleased many people as opposed to the crawling choice.
Worms do have their place. Putting them on a hook before fishing may not be what kids or adults relish doing, but the results could be a nice sized bass or yellow pike. If you have a compost pile in your backyard, you can tell how rich the mixture is by the size of the worms. Without those creatures, you’d have to drive to the farm store for compost. They can inhabit a pile of dirt, newspapers, weeds, grass clippings, fruit and vegetable waste and make it truly productive growing vegetables. Better still, worms can perform the same magic on a pile of garbage. Maybe it contains the remains of some fancy dining.
Most species – including worms – play a huge role in the environment since one that is endangered is so necessary for other plants and animals. When it is extinct, a domino effect begins. It might take a while, but soon other species disappear, forever. Homo sapiens is as much a part of the ecosystem as weeds, vegetables, trees, deer and fish of the sea. It’s the idea of interconnectivity, which implies a link between two objects, going in both directions.
Consider the rain forest and the macaw, a creature that is so beautiful and colorful that individuals want to capture it and sell it for huge profits. In the process, as is expected, many of the birds die, which happens when they can’t adjust to living inside someone’s home, away from their natural habitat. In the forest they find nourishment, but what they’re looking for isn’t all that abundant. They seek out a special kind of nut, enclosed by a rock-hard shell. Even with a hammer, humans will find it extremely difficult to open, unless they have dynamite. The macaw uses its strong beak and finds the task relatively easy. In the process of opening the nut, some of the fruit falls to the ground or water below. This excess is enjoyed by other creatures nearby, which in turn may become prey for larger animals. All these small events keep the system flowing and in harmony.
Another example is the tapir, that won’t win any beauty contest unless the judge is Mr. Magoo. This creature thrives on fruit from the forest. With so much fiber, the tapir lets go of some body waste after indulging. The area is blessed with organic compost and seeds from the fruit. The latter is helpful in replanting another tree, which eventually produces more fruit. Human hunting affects the tapir, the seeds and the rain forest – another example of interconnectivity.
For the longest time, many scientists believed that animals weren’t smart, weren’t capable of feeling emotions or couldn’t figure things out. In some circles, neurologists and other specialists looked down on podiatrists and doctors of internal medicine. There was the same discrimination as regular doctors were regarded as superior to veterinarians. In this last slighting, when someone asked, What do you call a physician? The answer was, A veterinarian who can only treat one species. Veterinarians are neurologists, oncologists, dentists and family physicians as well. Moreover, today getting into veterinary school is harder than being accepted to med school.
It’s common knowledge that animals have cancer – leukemia, melanoma, for starters – just like humans. There are no reasons why DVMs couldn’t share information about the disease with oncologists and vice versa. The same applies to other health issues such as heart attacks and digestive issues. Between the medicine of humans and animals, there’s no dividing line and never was or should there ever be. In 2007, Roger Mahr and Ron Davis met in Lansing, Michigan, discussing their professions. The former was a veterinarian and Ron a physician. They discussed cancer, the problems of smoking, viruses and diabetes. More importantly, they asked for the end of segregation between their two professions. By working together, the health of humans and animals could be improved. When Jerry’s friend Kramer went to see a vet for his nasty cough, he was on to something. And yet, we laughed. There aren’t many books that I’ve written without a mention of that show.
Zoobiquity is the term that writers use for a more inclusive approach to health care, combining the treatment and healing of patients of all species. B. Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers combined to write the book, Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health And The Science Of Healing. Barbara is a cardiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Kathryn writes for The Atlantic and teaches a medical course at UCLA.
“Butterfly” is the name of a tune by Swing Out Sister, made up of Corinne Drewery and Andy Connell. Originally comprising three members, they chose the name because it was the only one they agreed upon – they all hated it. Released in 2008 on the CD, Beautiful Mess, I hadn’t heard the song until the summer of 2014.