Butterflies and Moths Yummy or Terrifying?

After this post you may never look a butterflies and moths the same way again. This investigation began like so many others with a question which caught my attention on a reality show this past week where a child asked; "Can you eat a butterfly?" Huh interesting idea, I thought to myself. The short answer is yes, but it is probably easier and more nutritious to eat them as larva. 

There are some famously huge butterflies out there such as the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing

Photo By Bruno Ramos from Creative Commons

This butterfly has over a nine inch wingspan! They live in the Australasia / Indomalaya (Australia) ecozone. There is also an impressive relation of the butterfly the Atlas Moth which also boasts an impressive 9.8 inch wingspan. (This is the spot that I would love to put the picture of my friend Jon with an Atlas moth sitting on his face but sadly my computer ate it.) 

Photo by Nevit Dilmen From Creative Commons

Now while the wings of these two insects are rather large the bodies are rather small. And those bodies are covered in small scales which slough off rather easily. Eating that to me would be like eating a lint covered jellybean. Now after doing some searching I stumbled across an interesting paper published in 2013 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations about edible insects and food security in it they have a small section on butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera). They point out that most of the butterflies and moths consumed around the world are done so when they are in the larval form as squishy caterpillars.

Now I don't live in the tropics (neither did the child who sparked this post) so, I am going to consider just a few of the lovable squishy nuggets you can find in my back yard. There are about 118 butterfly species which call the entire state of Maine home. I am immediately ruling out eating anything that has little tiny hairs/spines. There are some caterpillars out there which have chemicals on or in those hairs which cause something known as lepidopterism which is a skin condition caused by coming in contact which these tiny hairs. You can also get a number of injuries caused by moth larva which are collectively referred to in the medical community as erucism. PLEASE DO NOT FREAK OUT AND SMASH EVERY CATERPILLAR WITH SPINES! JUST LEAVE THEM ALONE AND DO NOT PET THEM!

        
                          

I am also ruling out anything that tastes bad to a bird, frog, toad, other insects, or reptiles if it doesn't taste good to them it more than likely will not taste good to me either. You know what this suddenly seems way too complicated, because after I sort through all 118 butterfly species here in Maine and  rule out all exclusions I then still have to test them a little at a time to make sure that I am not allergic to them. So, while yes you can eat them by the time you narrow any list down to those you personally can eat you more than likely could have rounded up a whole bunch of crickets or even a few tasty other critters out there which we already know are edible. 





Want more information
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4028003/
http://www.vapaguide.info/catalogue/MIS-76
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190962206017117
https://www.quora.com/Are-moths-dangerous-to-humans-Why
https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/772949-overview
http://mbs.umf.maine.edu/maine-species-list/

Also Just for fun I recommend watching this: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/beetle-survives-toad-vomit-animals/

What the Itch!

                                       
Now is the time of year where people start dreaming of spring and strolling down the street after work reveling in the fact that it is still light enough to do just that. Others are sick of dealing with what my mom always referred to as "winter itch" the truly annoying itch associated with dry skin. Which got me to thinking about itching which then sent me down a Google rabbit hole which I am still stuck in.

Recently there have been some great scientific breakthroughs in understanding the neurological  pathways which cause the itch sensation and some of the chemicals associated with itching. (If you want to read some of these articles listed at the bottom of this post. That's great soon hopefully there will be treatments for people with severe itches caused by medications or skin conditions.

One thing with still baffles, at least this mind, is what purpose does itching serve? So, I Googled and Googled and Googled different combination of search terms to see if there was any information about the evolution of itching. Most of what I found were a lot of chatroom discussions on itching where people said things like; "well, duh it tells you when something is crawling across your skin." or "it's a way to tell you to stay away from things." Ok, so I can accept some of the logic here histamines are a group of neurotransmitters which trigger various parts of your immune system letting it know you are under attack. I myself have a severe allergic reaction to any member of the rose family. If I eat a raspberry, blackberry, or try to make rose hip jam I find myself dealing with either annoyingly bad case of hives or full on anaphylactic shock symptoms. So maybe it was just a way to warn us to be more vigilant about the world around us.  

                   

But where did itching begin? What was the first organism which experienced itching and how come after generations upon generations of evolution we still have not lost the itch? Is there a way to trace the genes which code for these neurotransmitters to give us an idea of what the environment was like when itching first began and what was the first unfortunate organism to experience itching. I will keep up my Google rabbit hole search and let you know if it spits out any interesting conclusions, until then think and wonder.




Want to know more?
http://www.medicaldaily.com/scratching-itchy-skin-causes-brain-release-hormone-serotonin-intensifies-itchy-sensation-308458
https://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-do-we-itch-emma-bryce
http://discovermagazine.com/2014/jan-feb/94-itching-for-answers
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/why-do-we-itch-the-science-behind-the-scratch/news-story/3ae28d06a0bf2425a0fd8fa3463bd2f3
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-why-we-itch-and-scratch/

The Fish Did It!

A few years ago a friend of mine bought a house with a pond and shorty after they moved in found out there were mussels living in the pond. Something under the cover of darkness was eating them and discarded broken open mussel shells all along the edges of their pond. "But how did they get their in the first place?" was the question she posed to me one evening.

The pond in question.

I thought this was going to be a bit of a challenge and that I would have to study the hydrology of the area mapping the streams which flow through the swamps nearby looking for those two tough mussel who crawled this way there and then created all the future generations. Or maybe it was a bird flying overhead who lost its lunch and dropped a pregnant mussel into the pond.

Not being a hundred percent able to remember how freshwater mussels reproduce, after all its been 26 years since I took invertebrate zoology in college,  I did a quick Google search. BAM! There is the answer; fish!

Graphic swiped from University of Vermont

If you look at the graphic you'll see something called a glochidia which forms a cyst or a little cocoon on a fish were it hangs out and goes through a metamorphosis until it falls off the fish and finishes it life cycle.  Long ago the previous owner of the pond had it stocked with bait fish, so when the bait fish were introduced into the pond somewhere on one of those fish was a glochidia or two. Once they completed their use of the host fish they fell off and reproduced over and over again.

So, is there anything cool about freshwater mussels you ask? Oh, heck yeah!

 1) They produce freshwater pearls.
 2) The United States contains over three hundred different species of freshwater mussels which inhabit all 50 states. The United States contains 1/3 of the estimated 1,000 species of freshwater mussels known worldwide. Some states have conservation programs to help the mussels avoid becoming locally extinct. 
3) They range in size from a tiny pebble to as big as a dinner plate.
4) If you happen to be a racoon, river otter, or muskrat they are one of your favorite foods.
5) Freshwater mussels can live up to 100 years and if you want to know how old the mussel is all you have to do is count the rings. Each year mussels much like trees add new growth ring.



Want to know more check out some of these websites.
http://www.uvm.edu/~pass/tignor/mussels/
https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/7360/546179
https://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/freshwater-mussels/

Just how many cat littler boxes would that be?

Twenty-three years ago I was living in a very unique place in the United States, Mosca, Colorado, home to the largest pile of sand.

Great Sand Dunes National Park photo by NPS

Back when I worked there as an intern it was just a National Monument which after the addition of land which use to be a working ranch it is not Great Sand Dunes National Park and Wilderness Preserve and it should be on your bucket list of places to visit before you die. It is about 8 hours south east of Denver, Colorado and approximately half and hour north of Taos, New Mexico. Why visit you might ask well, there is tons of wildlife to see, cool looking insects which only climb around on the dunes at night, and the highest point of the dune field stands a staggering 755 feet tall. Also if you hit the park at just the right time of the year you can body surf along Medano Creek. Trust me it's a fun time.

Kids surfing Medano Creek photo by NPS

Ok, by now you are probably wondering where the cat litter boxes come in. One afternoon I had just gotten done giving the afternoon terrace talk and was standing there answering questions; one of the most common being what can you use this sand for? the answer to that question from a commercial perspective is nothing. The sand after tumbling across the dry river valley for years and years has become very rounded making it useless for concrete and there is something about it but I can't remember what that makes it unfit for glass production.  This guy walks up to me and says "how many cat littler boxes could you fill with that? I turned to him thought for a second and replied I have no idea. I meant to sit down and figure out this answer before the season ended, but sadly between writing papers for college and doing everything needed for my internship something had to give. Also I HATE math. Really, I do with a passion of 10,000 fiery suns. There are those occasions where I will sit down and do math to figure out something. For example, in 2013 I figured out how many years it would take for all the of the water in Lake McDonald to completely change. Answer 2.5 years on average. (If you want to know how to figure that out send me an email and I'll let you know.)
I am pretty sure that kids in the United States would be much better at math if we gave them math problems like the cat litter box and how long does it take for all the water in Lake McDonald to completely change instead of asking if train A is traveling 25mph headed towards train B which is traveling 65mph how long would it take before they collide.

Ok, so what do we need to know to answer the cat litter box question?

             1) The volume of a cat litter box.
                  Wow, who knew there were so many cat litter box styles!? Using just the open top cat      

               litter boxes found on this website  I sat down and averaged the volume of seven different open topped litter boxes. Answer= 3,320 cubic inches

              2) Volume of sand contained in the sand dunes. 

        Truth be told this is the point where I thought the math was going to push me over 

                the edge and send me screaming from the apartment.  Scrolling through the frequently   asked questions page you find this: 

                  "The large, main dunefield covers approximately 30 square miles, but there are 

                   many more square miles of smaller dunes in the sand sheet surrounding the main 

                   dunefield. At the widest point, the main dunefield runs six miles and at the greatest    

                   length, eight miles."

                   Oh, sure how the heck to do calculate that? There must be an easier answer so, back to 

                   the Google! Bingo!!! Thank you once again Andrew Valdez! In his post on the park 

                   website he answers just this question: 4.8 billion cubic meters.

Now I have all the information I need. All I have to do first is determine how many cubic inches there are in a 4.8 billion cubic meters of sand. Answer if  I have converted correctly 

                                  1 cubic meter = 61,023.7 cubic inches

                                  292,913,760,000,000 cubic inches

Dividing our cat litter box average into the above giant number gives us.....drum roll........

                                             88,227,036,144.57831 Cat litter boxes that can be filled using the sand found at Great Sand Dunes. 

HOWEVER, this is not accurate I don't think. Taking a quick poll of some cat loving friends of mine on Facebook this morning I found out that most of them put between 3-5 inches of litter in the bottom of the kitty box, so the above number might be a little small. I need a new average for the cubic volume of the cat litter box because the above number assumes we are filling the box to the TOP with sand. Adjusting the height of the cat litter boxes to be between 3-5 inches I redid the math. New volume average: 1,566.3 cubic inches. This means there is 

                                               187,007,852,901.743 Cat litter boxes worth of sand.

Ok, my head hurts from all this math I'm gonna go read a book. 

If you happen to be a mathematician and determine that my answer it wrong PLEASE send the correct answer. I will not be offended after all I stink at math. 

Nature Mystery Number 2!

I was out for a walk not too long ago and came across an awesome sight; evidence of a 6 foot tall beaver!!!!

Could this be a hold over from the last ice age which has been hiding out in the deep dark wood of Maine? After all during the last ice age there were beavers which measured about eight feet long and weighed close to 220 pounds.  What are the chances? Well, about as good as me seeing Bigfoot walking through the Oregon woods, not going to happen.

So, what is going on here?  Walk a few more feet further into the woods and you will find a beaver dam and the beginning of a beaver lodge. Since beavers can cut down trees as large as two feet around the beaver strolled by and thought hey this would make an excellent log for my beaver dam and got to chomping. Now while birch trees are a rather hard wood those amazing incisors they have easily make short work of this tree.  

Now the top set of chew marks is about 3-3 1/2 above the surface of the ground and the bottom cut is about 2 1/2 feet above the surface of the ground. Why is the top one so far off the ground?  It is a little hard to tell the how I took the picture, but there is a pretty significant hill on the left side of this picture. By looking a the wind blown shape of the tops of the surrounding trees it is obvious the wind blows over this area pretty strongly from the west (left side of the photograph.) As the wind blows across the hill the snow builds up deeper and deeper until the wandering beaver scopes out the tree for chopping.  As the winter nears an end the snow slowly starts to melt more of the base of the tree becomes uncovered and the beaver came back for another section of log. However, the beaver never had a chance to completely chip through the second section of tree before the snow melted out from underneath it.

Keep and eye out for mysteries in the forest around you!


Ps: If you have never seen just how into building dams beavers are take a look at the largest beaver dam anywhere in the world. Found in 2007, it is over 2,800 feet long!

It sounded like such a good idea until....

I'm all for saving money and making your own homemade stuff whenever possible, but somethings are really not worth the effort it takes.

Example number one: Maple Syrup

While I was living in Vermont my roommates excitedly exclaimed at breakfast "Hey let's make our own maple syrup!" They looked at me expecting me to share in their excitement, but were met only with a blank stare on my face. "It will be fun!" my inner-city Chicago roommate exclaimed. Now I had made maple syrup at a number of different jobs, so I knew how much work was going to be involved. After much begging they wore me down and convinced me to help. The first weekend went simply enough a friend loaned us all the supplies we would need; sap buckets, taps, to unused large plastic garbage cans to store our sap in, a 50 gallon oil drum set up which we could use to build a fire in and put our evaporating pan on top. He was even nice enough to help us tap the trees. After a few weeks passed we had enough sap to start the boiling process. As the sap boiled down we added more sap to the pan and at the end of day one of boiling we had made about 1/4 cup of syrup. 24 hours of boiling to make a measly 1/4 cup of syrup. This went on for weeks; collecting sap, boiling sap, splitting wood for the fire barrel. After about two months of doing this every weekend we had managed to produce 6 pints of smokey tasting backyard maple syrup. 192 hours of work to create 12 cups of maple syrup that is $160.00 a cup. On average it takes 25 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup and unless you have a large and preferably shallow pan to boil it in the whole process will take a very long time.

Example number two: Candle making

While I was working on one of the Boston Harbor Islands I realized there were tons of bayberry bushes all over the island.

Northern Bayberry Shrub

After making sure it was ok with my bosses, that I harvest some of the berries, I grabbed a bunch of shopping bags and started to collect them. Two large bags of  berries later I thought I had enough to make some candles.  Now the main reason I was doing this is because in my family it has always been a tradition to burn a bayberry candle all the way down to the bottom on New Year's Eve. The legend goes that if you burn a bayberry candle all the way to the stump it will bring you good luck and prosperity in the new year.  Bayberry candles can be hard to find and when you do 100% bayberry candles can be rather expensive. Few hours of simmering the berries I had a nice little waxy skim on the top of my water. Grabbed two more bags of berries and repeated the process making maybe 1/8 of an inch of wax. Now with the invention of the internet the great Google will tell you that you need anywhere from 1-15 pounds of berries to make enough wax for a votive candle or possibly a 3 inch pillar candle! However, preinternet the reference books I was reading were not very helpful telling me only that wax content varies based on the health of the plant. After simmering about 10 shopping bags full of berries I finally admitted defeat and had created maybe a birthday candle sized amount of wax.

About 12 years later I created another type of candles which worked much better and was way easier! Tallow candles. I was working at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park where I got to dress up in costume and teach people about what life was like for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Me Tending the tallow in buckskin clothing.

One of the school programs we have at the park the students learn quill pen writing, flint and steel fire starting, and tallow candle making. Obviously it is too dangerous to have fourth-graders boiling hot flammable fat so that job fell to me and the kids would wick up the candle molds that I would be filling with tallow. At the end of the day they each went home with a candle.

What you will need:
 50 pound of kidney beef fat- this you can get by calling your local grocery store or butcher shop and ordering it. You do need to specify kidney fat or you may end up with fat better used for sausage or suet feeder making.  You will also need a large pot and an open fire. Bring the fat to a rolling boil and boil and boil until you have something which looks like a clear amber liquid. When it cools it will turn a nice off white in color.

50 pounds of boiling beef fat.

Now if you manage to get your fire to the point where you can maintain a nice rolling boil you can render down 50 pounds of beef fat in about 8 hours. Watch the level of your fire or the beef fat will go up like a roman candle if the flames get too tall. Sounds simple your thinking what could possible be the drawback? Well there are a few. If you happen to own a dog the minute you bring the tallow candle into the house the dog will try and try and try to eat the thing. After all to a dog it SMELLS SO YUMMY! Second draw back is the smell when you burn it, think smokey hamburger, not exactly the mood you were hoping for around the Thanksgiving table. Oh, the biggest draw back will be how you smell after sitting around a fire pit boiling down 50 pounds of beef fat. It is a smell that will stick with you for weeks and nothing you do will make you smell any better. I'm sure the strange smell in my old car was lingering tallow stink.

Let this stand a cautionary tale that not all good ideas are really worth the effort. 

I scream, you scream, we all scream for LOBSTER!!!!

What is it about lobsters that people find so captivating?  Granted I will give you they are great drowned in butter or served with a side of onion rings.

Yumm! Lobster roll!

This past summer I spent working on a lobster boat. Now the cool thing about this lobster boat is we are built to all of the same specifications as a commercial lobster boat with three exceptions the biggest one being we carry passengers and give tours which focus on lobsters and the local area.

Before people even get on the boat they excitedly as "Hey, are we going to hold a lobster?"  "You bet" was my standard answer. With a few exceptions every time we pull a lobster trap on to the boat there are lobsters inside waiting to be released and a few that were making their escape as we are pulling the trap out of the water. There are a number of escape hatches built into a lobster trap which allows small lobsters to escape and the lobsters can back out of the openings into the trap if they want to. Every so often there were lobsters which wandered in and due to their size couldn't always get back out.

Each of these lobsters weighs between 6-7 pounds a piece. 

If you are trying to get a sense of size for the lobsters in the above picture that is my size 9 boot in the picture and to get a sense of the size of the crusher claw of the lobster in the middle take a look at the picture below.

My hand next to a 6 pound lobsters claw.

Even with rubber bands on the claws if pass a 6-7 pound lobster around the boat for people to take pictures with many will shrink back in terror as if you are handing them a loaded hand grenade. Lobsters are a little like alligators in that their muscles work better in one direction than they do in another. Lobsters have a great amount of crushing power in the crusher claw, about 100 pounds per square inch of pressure. However, you can free your arm or finger from a lobsters claw just by placing a screwdriver in the claw and twisting. I learned this maneuver by accidentally getting three different parts of my right arm stuck in various lobsters over the summer. To answer your question no broken bones, but yes it is a pain you will remember forever.

People would ask me what is the coolest thing about lobsters I knew and questions that at the time I didn't have any answers to. 

Top 5 cool facts about lobsters:
           
             1) Lobsters can regenerate all lost body parts with the exception of one. Lobsters can not regenerate lost eyes. If a lobster were to loose an eye a different body part will regenerate in the eye socket. This means there might be a four clawed lobster roaming the deep dark waters of the of the North Atlantic Ocean.

            2) Lobsters pee out between their eyes. As lobsters fight they pee in the face of their attacker.
Even though lobsters do not have a true brain, it is more a small collection of nerve endings, they can remember the smell of  a lobster they have done battle with for close to a week.

            3) The largest lobster ever caught off the North American coast was caught in Nova Scotia back in 1977 and it was 44 pounds and estimated to be 100 years old.  The amount of force in the crusher claw of that lobster can crush the bone on a humans arm.

            4) Lobsters come in a variety of colors and can be two different colors at the same time. When you cook these crazy colored lobsters they all turn red in the end.

            5) 80% of a Maine Lobsters diet is made up of lobster bait.

Answers to some of the most perplexing tourist questions:

            1) How far does a lobster migrate?  When the ocean begins to cool down they start moving to the deeper warmer waters. Most lobsters travel about a mile from where they send the summer and the deeper waters in the winter. Some may travel about 5-6 miles in search of warmer deeper waters. There was one lobster which had been tagged and then dropped in the waters off the Continental Shelf which was later recovered off of Port Jefferson, New York. That is a traveling distance of 225 miles!

           2) Why don't people farm raise lobsters?  Simple answer way too expensive. There are a few research institutions which will collect eggs from pregnant females and hatch them in an aquarium.

The back balls are lobster eggs attached to a female.

Once they get to about one inch in length before they are released into the ocean where they will settle to the bottom of the ocean and hide in crevasses in the rocks continuing to grow. On average it takes 6-7 years before a lobster gets to the minimum marketable size for a legal lobster here in the state of Maine. So if you were to try to farm raise a lobster you would have to feed them, keep them well oxygenated, and from killing each other for 6-7 years that is a lot of time and money. That would produce a very expensive lobster!

          3) How many women are lobstermen? First yes, the correct term is lobsterman not lobsterwoman, they will correct you. about 4% of lobstermen in Maine are women. this number does not factor in the number of women who work as sternmen on a lobster boat.

         4) What is the white slimy stuff you find on the top of lobster meat? This one took me a while to figure out what white stuff people were referring to. Some of the white stuff you find on lobster meat is nothing more than a connective membrane just under the lobsters shell and there is also a little bit of fat. When lobsters are cooked their blood which is normally clear turns kinda white and gelatinous.

         5) How much of the weight of a lobster is the weight of its shell? This one the answer is proving to be a little more elusive. Right now I have not been able to sleuth out that answer. Next time I will get my lobster to go and bring it home and pull the  shell off my lobster and weigh the edible parts and the shell separately. Stay tuned!