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Obviously recorded from some distance away, these otters are chasing a butterfly. I get the idea that they really aren’t trying to catch it, just keep it in their sights. And stay with the group. -via Arbroath
Insects are so numerous and so varied that are an evolutionary success story. Much of this success is attributed to an insect’s wings, which can do so many things besides fly. Different bugs use their wings to communicate, attract a mate, hide, protect themselves, and more. Wired has a gallery of close-up views of the special things wings can do. For example: the butterfly pictured doesn’t need camouflage, since its wings are so transparent as to render it invisible to predators. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Maki Aoyama)
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by Ron E. Hassner, University of California, Berkeley
Figure 1. A specimen of Heliconius erato. The Lorenz butterfly may be a member of this species.
Here is the most complete record yet compiled of the travels of the Lorenz butterfly.
The most famous butterfly in science made its first reported appearance in 1972, in a paper on chaos theory presented by Edward Lorenz to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.1 In the paper, Lorenz presented a cornerstone argument of chaos theory: very small differences in initial conditions can lead to large effects in complex systems. He entitled the paper with an appropriate example, calling it, “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”
Lorenz’s butterfly has since appeared in every conceivable reference to chaos theory. Yet despite its meteoric rise to fame, chaos theorists soon lost track of the butterfly’s whereabouts.
Reported Sightings
In 1987, James Gleick rediscovered Lorenz’s butterfly and announced triumphantly that “a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.”2 Gleick could not explain when or why the butterfly had moved to Peking, of all places, why it should suddenly shift its attention from tornadoes in Texas to storm systems in New York, or where it had been in the intervening fifteen years. But in 1992, five years after Gleick’s discovery, the butterfly returned to Brazil—specifically to Rio de Janeiro—where it was spotted by Denny Gulick.3
Figure 2. Global movements of Lorenz’s butterfly.
At this point, the sightings grew more frequent. In 1993, the blockbuster movie Jurassic Park located the insect in Beijing. Two years after that, several scientists reported, in this journal, seeing the subject in Lausanne, Switzerland.4 In 1996, Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan found it frolicking in France, and immediately pronounced that “a butterfly flaps its wings in Paris… [which] results in a hurricane in Miamii.”5 The year after that, the butterfly returned to its previous haunt in China. However, as David Campbell and Gottfried Mayer-Kress were to document, it had focused its attention on the weather in San Francisco.6 Peter Smith confirmed the butterfly’s Chinese location in 1998, by which time its flapping was affecting the climate of South England.7 John B. Arden spotted the butterfly in Venezuela that same year.8
Despite its now advanced age, Lorenz’s butterfly continues to be tracked by chaos theorists. In the year 2000, it was spotted in both the Amazon rain forest and Harrisburg, Virginia.9 By 2001, it had moved to California. From there, it flew to Japan, where Grove, Ladas & Grove located it 2004.10 That same year it appeared once more in Brazil and then returned to China in 2006.11
Figure 3. The mathematical pattern known as the Lorenz attractor.
Discussion
The longevity and traveling speed of the famed butterfly have occasioned some dispute about its identity. The butterfly is possibly of the species Heliconius erato (also known as the “Red Postman”), famed for its extraordinary longevity (see Figure 3). Common in South America, it has an impressive tornado-inducing wingspan of 2.25 inches.12
Curiously, the pattern of the butterfly’s movements, as plotted on a world map, replicates a pattern that is characteristic of certain systems that exhibit so-called “chaotic” behavior. The tracings in Figure 1 compare easily with those in Figure 3, which shows a mathematical pattern known as the Lorenz attractor. This pattern was named after Edward Lorenz, the very man whose theory had first called attention to this novel branch of lepidoptery. More curiously still, the butterfly shape of the Lorenz attractor resembles none other than the Heliconius erato (compare Figure 3 with Figure 2). The significance or meaning of any of this has yet to be determined.
References
1. The Essence of Chaos, Edward Lorenz, University of Washington Press, 1993, pp. 14–5 and 181–4.
2. Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick, Viking, 1987, p. 8.
3. Encounters with Chaos, Denny Gulick, McGraw Hill, 1992, p. 92.
4. “Experimental Evidence of the Butterfly Effect,” D. Inaudi1, X. Colonna de Lega, A. Di Tullio, C. Forno, P. Jacquot, M. Lehmann, Max Monti, and S. Vurpillot, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 1, no. 6, November–December 1995.
5. Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change, Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan, Blackwell, 1996, pp. 156–7.
6. “Chaos and Politics: Application of Nonlinear Dynamics to Social-Political Issues,” David K. Campbell and Gottfried Mayer-Kres, The Impact of Chaos on Science and Society (Celso Grebogi and James A. York, eds.), 1997, p. 41.
7. Explaining Chaos, Peter Smith, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 1.
8. Science, Theology and Consciousness: The Search for Unity, John Boghosian Arden, Praeger, 1998, p. 23.
9. Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos, Roger Lewin, University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 11; Conscious Acts and the Politics of Social Change, Robin L. Teske and Mary Ann Tetreault, University of South Carolina Press, 2000, p. 116.
10. Macroshift: Navigating the Transformation to a Sustainable World, Ervin Laszlo, Arthur Charles Clarke and Kay Mikel, Berrett-Koehler, 2001, p. 10; Periodicities in Nonlinear Difference Equations, E. A. Grove, Chapman & Hall, 2004, p. 38.
11. The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking, Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird, Springer, 2004, p. xxi; Science and Grace: God’s Reign in the Natural Sciences, Tim Morris and Don Petcher, Crossway Books, 2006, p. 332, note 23.
12. “Longevity Studies in a Tropical Conservatory: Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth?”, John R. Watts, Butterfly Pavilion of Westminster, CO, p. 8, table 2; “Schmetterlinge und Brustwarzen,” L. Arazi, Annals of the German Society for Entomology, vol. 8, no. 2, 1994; “Lifespan of Butterflies,” J. A. Scott, Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera, vol. 12, 1973.
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The article above is from the January-February 2007 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Photo: Joel Sartore
National Geographic has a neat gallery of wonderful patterns in butterflies. This one is my favorite, the neglected eighty eight (or 89, depending on the butterfly) butterfly (Diaethria neglecta). Does anyone know the reason it’s called "neglected"?
Previously on Neatorama: Joel Sartore’s RARE: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species
Tom Beddard of subblue created this nifty little Flash application where you can draw your own mathematical butterfly:
Taken from Clifford Pickover’s book, Computers and the Imagination, is this experiment that creates butterfly like curves.
The formula is expressed in polar coordinates as:
By changing the A, B, a, b and c parameters you can get some nice results.
It’s fun to change the parameters to see what you get: Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival
Micrograph by Martin Oeggerli
Zebra longwing butterfly egg (Heliconius charithonia)
The orange hue of this zebra longwing butterfly egg may warn predators: "Eat me if you dare." The threat would not be idle. The egg contains cyanide and other toxins ingested by adults from the plants
they eat.
We don’t have to look far to find alien-looking lifeforms, as the September 2010 issue of National Geographic shows. All you need is a microscope and a few insect eggs.
Links: Article by Rob Dunn | Photo Gallery by Martin Oeggerli in cooperation with Prüftechnik Uri and School of Applied Sciences, FHNW
Your cute video of the day comes from the Philadelphia Zoo, via Neatoramanaut
Marty McGuire. Here’s his YouTube clip of several Humboldt penguins havinga bit of fun chasing a butterfly.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Marty!
Transparency in animals is something that is still not entirely understood by science. The beautiful Glasswing butterfly possesses this feature in abundance – a great percentage of its wingspan is almost completely transparent.
It is thought that the wings have large amounts submicroscopic protrusions that have the same refractive index which means that they do not scatter light, so giving the impression of transparency. Whatever the reason, this is a startling and little known creature.
A butterfly with transparent wings? Surely not. Yet there is a species that exhibits this trait. Take a close look at the incredible Glasswing, an enchanting species that confounds science. Greta oto may sound like the name of a silent movie star from Eastern Europe but is in fact the scientific name for one of the most exquisite – and little known – species of butterfly on the planer. This butterfly’s claim to fame is that its wings, spanning up to six centimeters, are almost completely transparent. That’s right, you can see just about right through them.
Link – via webphemera
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
