The Garden Thyme Podcast
A monthly podcast where we help you get down and dirty in your garden, with timely gardening tips, information about native plants, and more! The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. https://extension.umd.edu/. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.
The Garden Thyme Podcast
May Butterfly Pavilion Interview with Arthur Earle of the NMNH
Hello Listener,
This month, we discuss butterflies and the Smithsonian Butterfly Pavilion at National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. with Arthur Earle.
Arthur answers all our questions about the behind-the-scenes part of running a butterfly show. We talk about why butterflies are important. Arthur gives us some fun butterfly facts about poop and why butterflies like booze.
This month we skipped the Native Plant of the Month, Bug of the Month, and Garden Tips of the Month.
We currently have an open survey for ALL listeners, whether you’ve listened to all of our episodes or this is your first time. We developed an evaluation to find out if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home. We promise that it is a short, easy 5-minute survey, and we even have exclusive podcast stickers to give to those who participate. We are so thankful for the feedback, and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast!
If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at UMEGardenPodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcas. For more information about UME and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center and Maryland Grows Blog at https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/.
The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Principal Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County), and Emily Zobel-Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).
Theme Song: By Jason Inc,
University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.
We currently have an open survey for ALL listeners. Whether you’ve listened to all of our episodes, or this is your first time. We developed an evaluation to determine if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home. We promise that it is a short, easy 5-minute survey, and we even have exclusive podcast stickers to give to those who participate. We are so thankful for the feedback, and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast!
If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at UMEGardenPodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcas.
For more information about UME and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center and Maryland Grows Blog at https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/.
The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Principal Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture; Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County); and Emily Zobel- Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).
Theme Song: By Jason Inc,
University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all wit...
Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript: S5:E05
Butterfly Exhibits
Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcriber, and may contain errors.
:Upbeat Music:
Emily
Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland extension presents the Garden Time podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Emily.
Mikaela
I'm Mikaela.
Rachel
I'm Rachel.
Emily
In this month's episode, we are excited to welcome our guest, Arthur Earle, from the Smithsonian Institute's Natural Museum of Natural History's Butterfly Pavilion. We are so excited to hear all about how the Butterfly Show takes place and everything that's involved with it that we might flutter away.
:Upbeat Music:
Emily
Welcome to the podcast, Arthur. We are so excited to have you on.
Arthur
Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this.
Emily
We know that May is the season of butterfly exhibits and shows all across the country, and some of them are seasonal, but the one at the Smithsonian happens to be year-round. So we are excited to have you on here to talk all about butterflies and springtime and how these butterfly exhibits take place and everything that happens behind the scenes to make these magical memory places. So can you tell us a little bit about the Butterfly Pavilion at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum?
Arthur
Sure. So we've been open since 2006. We opened on Valentine's Day, so that's a fun little anniversary date for us each year. The Butterfly Pavilion is inside the Natural History Museum itself, so it's a completely indoor facility right there. When you're in the hallway, you can see the Butterfly Pavilion. It's this giant fiber glass structure that's built directly into the hallway there. And inside of it, we have roughly three 300 to 400 butterflies at any given time. There's usually around 50 to 60 species of them at a time, and we are getting butterflies from all over the world. An exhibit like this needs constant maintenance. We are just endlessly shipping in new butterflies, releasing new butterflies into the exhibit. We've got mostly exotic species in there. There's a handful of domestic butterflies that we put in at the time But most of the butterflies that you'll see in there are going to be coming from around the world.
Mikaela
That's great.
Rachel
That's awesome.
Mikaela
I mean, all I'm envisioning is that Arthur gets to skip through the Butterfly Pavilion, just like a Disney princess. The butterfly is just running around. So tell us a little bit more about your role at the Butterfly Pavilion.
Arthur
So I'm the current lead of the exhibit. Part of what I do each day in there is the morning routine of setting up the exhibits each day. Every morning, we've got a standard set of functions that we need to perform in there to keep the pavilion looking nice and well-maintained. So one of the things that we do is we have to water all of the plants in there. There's no built-in irrigation system, so we just wheel in a giant watering tank, and it takes around 15 to 20 minutes to water everything in the pavilion. Some of the plants are guzzlers that just need tons of water every day. Other plants, we've got some orchids in there. Those things we water maybe every three to four days, once a day, and they seem to be quite happy with that. We are also keeping the pavilion nice and clean. We're wiping down services, we're sweeping everything up. We're cleaning off the mirrors that we've got there. Each end of the pavilion has a containment vestibule where we need to search people and check ourselves every time we go out of this room to make sure that no butterflies are struggling along with us.
Arthur
And those mirrors that we have are very popular with kids going and rubbing their little faces on. Those get a daily wipe down each day, too. There are also these rotting fruit trees that we have for feeding some of the butterflies. A few species in there exclusively feed on rotting fruit and tree sap, so we need to keep them supplied with their fruit. And most of the daily maintenance that requires is us just shaving down the top layer of fruit in there. The thing about these butterflies is that they don't really like the fruit when it's fresh. They want it to be rotting, and especially, they want it to be fermenting. So we keep it in there for three to four days. And by the final day that the fruit's in there, it's becoming a liquid. It's covered in mold. The butterflies absolutely love it. Once it's past that, we just can't keep it in there. It starts spilling juices everywhere. So we put in the new fruit, and the butterflies hate it for a day or two until it starts to rotten up again. We also go through the flower beds every morning, and we have to pick out all of the dead butterflies that we can find in there.
Arthur
These are living out their full adult lifespans in this room. And if we don't go through and pick out the dead ones, then two things can happen. Number one is the slugs will get to them, and number two is the ants will get to them, and either of those will try to increase their populations, and we don't want that. If those populations of pests that are in the pavilion get too numerous, then they start causing problems for the adult butterflies. So we just have to make sure that we catch as many of the dead butterflies as we can so they don't get more food for all the ants and slugs. Pests like this are inevitable in any one of these facilities. You will not be able to stop yourself from getting ants or slugs or any other little pest that gets in there, like apids, through trips. Then once we're done with the morning routine in there, we need to make sure that there's always a staff member inside the pavilion. Part of our permitting requirement is that there is someone always stationed at what we just refer to as the back door. It's the person who needs to inspect every single visitor that exits there.
Arthur
We have this whole song and dance with having the visitors checking themselves in the mirror while we are checking them over for any butterflies that are tagging along. We have capture nets in there, so we're prepared if a butterfly gets into that room. The whole goal is to keep it contained within the pavilion. So if we catch a butterfly in there, then we will just rerelease it back inside the pavilion itself. The butterfly will be happy. So we need to make a big schedule on that because the pavilion is hot, it's humid, you do get tired in there at that shift, so we need to keep it rotating so everyone who's doing it has a fresh level head. And apart from that, another thing The thing that I do is process the butterfly shipments. Each week, we get 2-3 shipments. Each shipment has roughly 200 to 250 individuals in it. And most of these butterflies use gravity to help pull themselves out of their pupa. So we need to suspend all these things, which means that we have to pin every single pupa that we get onto a board and have that hanging inside its emergence case in there.
Arthur
And throughout the day, the butterflies will emerge. Some butterflies emerge literally the day after you get them. Others take weeks, months. And in some incredibly rare cases, we've had them go multiple years in their pupa stage before they felt like coming out. I do not have a good explanation for why those select few decided to take so long, but they were happy and healthy. They came out looking fine. They just really liked being in their pupa stage.
Emily
Adulthood can be hard, okay? Just not ready.
Mikaela
Yeah.
Rachel
I'm I'm just not ready for metamorphosis. I'm going to stay here just a little bit longer.
Mikaela
Do you rear the caterpillars backstage as well then?
Arthur
No, we are not rearing these from the beginning of their life cycle. So this is a fun part of working with all these exotic animals. We have to have very strict permits about having these things because most of them are coming from outside of the United States. The Department of Agriculture oversees all of our operations here. We also have an insect zoo that is just on the other side of the Butterfly Pavilion, and the USDA inspects that and inspects the Butterfly Pavilion. They come up with all the rules that we need to follow for containment. And one of the rules is that the butterflies are not allowed to reproduce inside the butterfly pavilion. So this is going to be roundabout, but trust me, it answers your question here. The butterflies in the pavilion, because most of them are from outside of the United States, they're legally classified as a type of biohazard. And if they're reproducing in there, what they could do is theoretically lay fertile eggs on any person who's in the pavilion. Those eggs are really tiny. Most of them are about the size of, I'll say, an individual couscous. And these things will get glued onto you.
Arthur
And if you walk out of that room with these eggs, then technically, you have just introduced just exotic wildlife to the US wildlife. So the USDA wants to prevent us from doing all that. So because we have to take all these steps to prevent them from reproducing, we would need to have an entire other pavilion just for rearing. And to sustain the population that we have, we would need to have five or six more of these rooms just for breeding the butterflies because they take up so many resources, so much time energy. We also just don't have a staff large enough to rear these butterflies from the egg stage. Some of these caterpillars are really picky about what their food source can be. One of our butterflies is called an owl butterfly. They're among the largest ones that we get, and their caterpillars eat banana plants. And banana plants are tropical, and they're huge. The amount of just banana plants we would need to ship in to keep a small population of owl butterflies reproducing is well more than our facility is prepared for. So instead of all that, we just purchase everything in the pupa stage.
Arthur
That's why we're constantly getting shipments of these butterflies. It's on the It's so much cheaper and so much easier to just buy them from private breeders. So around the world, there are private breeders that grow large amounts of butterflies just for facilities like us. But none of the butterflies we get are coming from a smisun Smithsonian entity. All of them are just private individuals who have companies that do this.
Mikaela
That sounds very involved.
Rachel
It does.
Arthur
We have it easy because here in the United States, there is a company that we just call LPS, London Pupe Supply. They act as the importation of butterflies for most places in the United States. You can do this yourself, but then you have to go through all the bureaucracy of both the United States government and the government of whatever country is exporting them. And instead of doing that, this one company deals with that for everybody. So it's far more streamlined for us to import these things than it could be for, say, some companies that I've talked with out in Europe that have to deal with this all by themselves. And it's very difficult dealing with both governments at the same time. I can only imagine.
Rachel
I wouldn't think that it was going to be so difficult to get butterflies.
Arthur
It's all because they're exotic animals. Yeah, exactly. And even if it's a US butterfly, because we do have one supplier based in Florida, those butterflies are under a different set of rules until the instant they are in proximity to exotic butterflies. At that moment, the moment you put them into the emergence case with the exotics and into the pavilion, they just become the same thing as any of the imported butterflies with all the same protections and legal concerns on them. Now that they've been exposed, they count as exotics, even though they were originally domestics.
Emily
I wonder if that's to deal with disease issues potentially or fungal spores that may have come in on the chrysalis and then gotten on the adults.
Arthur
Yes, it is about disease and unknown pathogens. And believe me, that is common. Part of what we do with the emergency case every day is we're cleaning We're cleaning it out and we're also inspecting all the butterfly pupa. We're looking for moldy pupa. We're looking for disease pupa. It's a very common thing to encounter. I know this sounds sad, but not every butterfly that gets shipped to us actually makes it into the butterfly pavilion itself, because first they need to actually emerge from their chrysalids, and sometimes disease gets to them, and it's just a disease that they've already had carrying with them by the time they were shipped to us. In rare cases, we get paracetic wasps in a pupa. And while that is sad for the butterfly, it is fascinating when you come in, and sometimes they will just be tiny wasps the size of little ants. But then sometimes you'll come in and something the size of a mud dauber is flying around in your emergence case. And it's really cool, even though it is bad for the butterflies. So when we do that, we just immediately contain any of those wasps and freeze them and give a call so they can identify it.
Arthur
Not because they need to, but because they love doing it and they get really excited to get new wasps to identify.
Rachel
Like every other entomologist.
Arthur
Exactly. Yeah, we have it contained in a tube in our freezer. Come get it whenever you want. Oh, they love it. I love it.
Mikaela
That's so awesome. Rachel, did you have a question you were going to ask?
Rachel
Well, I feel like every time I have a question, Arthur answers it. He's just got it in his brain where I'm just like... Because I had typed out, What about the permitting process? Because I would have never thought that you needed a permit for a butterfly. But I don't know why I didn't think that, because we work for extension. We know what it means to bring in exotic species and have them set free in the wild. But I think that it's really far-fetched from a government standpoint that a butterfly potentially or theoretically, could lay an egg on an individual walking through that exhibit. I have kids. I've been through there. We're in, we're out. It's like 30 minutes because they're five and seven. They have the attention span of something that- Squirl. Squirl.
Arthur
Yes. Thank you. Did they get enamored by the mirror on the way out by any chance? Yeah, exactly. I agree. It does feel like a far-fetch idea that they could lay the egg, and that egg could propagate into something that could start damaging the US agriculture. But I also understand their concern of, let's just not risk it. It's pretty easy to suppress their reproductive instincts, because if you just don't put out host plants, they don't try to reproduce in the butterfly pavilion. It's a really easy method for population control. Now, there is an exception with that with our giant silk moths. So, some giant silk moths that are pretty famous around here would be things like the Luna moth or the Scropiumoth. Those just completely disregard this containment that we do. They will mate like crazy and lay eggs on everything. So our permit states we can have those as long as they're separated in their own container, and that's what we do. We just put them into a mesh box, and that's where they live their full adult lives. It's really convenient because they don't consume food as adults, so we don't need to restock that box with anything.
Arthur
They just sit in there every day. We might change it up because sometimes they like to batter themselves around, and there might be a few little wing shards in there. Or another thing people don't really consider with butterflies, they pee everywhere. They pee all the time. And especially when they first come out of their pupa, their abdomen is full of leftover after-birth fluid, meconium. And sometimes they will just spray that to lighten themselves up. Other times, they hold that in their bodies and they spray it out as a defense mechanism, which some of our biggest moths do. These things turn into little fire hoses the first time they're picked up, and we put them into a box. So you have to be careful to aim them certain directions, because I will reiterate, they pee everywhere. Oh, that's funny.
Rachel
That's a The new fun fact for today.
Mikaela
Yeah, I didn't know that. That's a good one.
Emily
It's like a puppy.
Rachel
I can go home and tell my kids the new fun fact, butterflies pee.
Mikaela
I was going to say, Rachael, your boys are going to love that. I know.
Rachel
So Just switching gears a little bit, I'd love to hear more about what roles butterflies play in nature, and what do you talk to participants or people who come to visit about conservation worldwide?
Arthur
Well, yeah. So butterflies in nature, one of their most famous roles is being pollinator as the adult butterfly. So they pollinate plants. The plant reproduces because of them. So that's a very nice thing. They are also food for many animals. There are tons of butterflies that are easy prey for all sorts of things like birds and lizards, and frogs. This comes up a lot with the big mobs that we have in their case, because when I tell people they don't consume food as adults, a lot of people ask, Well, then what's their ecological function? If they're not pollinating, then what do they do? And again, they're prey animals, but also one that gets overlooked by a lot of people is that decomposers get them after they die, so they go back and rejoin the whole food web afterwards. People in the pavilion, they do like to ask me about how they are good as pollinators. Believe me, butterflies are good pollinators, but they are not the top tier pollinators. They're not as efficient as bees or black soldier flies. That's another unsung hero of pollination right there. But I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the second half of your question.
Mikaela
No, I think we just wanted to know more about why people should care about butterfly conservation, or what do you talk to when people come to visit the Smithsonian?
Arthur
You should care about butterfly conservation because for One thing, butterflies are a good indicator of healthy ecosystems out there, and just having more of them around is a good thing because they're more pollinators to let plants reproduce, and they are more prey animals for other things to consume. So just the more butterflies you can get around, the better. A lot of visitors inside the Butterfly Pavilion do have a set of questions. There's questions that we just will always be asked when we were in People like to ask, How long do the butterflies live? That is probably the most common question that we get. So they live around 2-3 weeks as the adult butterfly, and then their full lifespan, on average, is around 2-3 months. It really can have all sorts of different ranges in it. A common follow-up question to that is, Well, what about the monarchs that fly all the way from Canada to Mexico? And yes, those do live a lot longer. Or those can live six or seven months as the adult. Partly has to do with how they conserve resources for reproduction, because they're not breeding along the way. But then once they do get down to Mexico, everyone is reproducing like crazy.
Arthur
And at that point, all the lifespans drop wildly. If you want to look at a bizarrely long lifespan, there is an Arctic tiger moth. We do not get this species. We are a tropical environment, so we're not getting something from the Arctic circle. But this tiger moth really cheats at it. It lives roughly 13 years. But of those 13 years, it is a caterpillar for pretty much all 13 of them, and it's also frozen solid. So it's technically alive, but it's in suspended animation. But then it comes out as a moth, and it only lives five or six days or so. And then the world freezes again, and it dies at that point.
Emily
That is neat. There's It's your second great butterfly fact for the day.
Rachel
I know.
Mikaela
We thrive on fun facts, and we knew you'd be full of them.
Rachel
It's an adorable tiger moth.
Mikaela
It's actually really cute. I know. It's really cool looking.
Rachel
It's got a lot of Maryland colors. It's like, Hey, I'm supposed to be a Maryland.
Emily
Well, it's need to see how it could adapt to living in such a harsh environment that probably only has a few weeks of warm spring. So being able to come out, feed, and then go back into, I guess, a very intense frozen diapause for the winter, and then coming back out, and then going back in. I feel like it's almost more extreme than the cicada larvated that, or the cicada nips to that point because they're feeding all year round underground. But this guy is up and about and just going in and out of intense hibernation. So that's pretty cool, though. That's a really neat butterfly fact. Okay, so our next question is going to be, now that we've We've talked a little bit about how important butterflies are for the environment. What are some things that our listeners can do to help with conservation of, say, our wild native butterfly species?
Arthur
A big one is planting appropriate host plants for butterflies. For that, I do highly recommend the resource pollinator. Org, because that lets you search for what are butterflies that live in your region of the United States, and what host plants you would need to plant for those. But just for your own garden, I cannot recommend enough planting appropriate host plants that are native to your area for the certain species of butterflies that live in your area that you are trying to attract. Awesome.
Emily
Okay, so a little bit more personal, do you have a favorite butterfly that is both in the exhibit and/or a favorite species that is in the wild?
Arthur
Sure. In the exhibit, my favorite is called the Grecian Shoemaker. It is a baffling name. Yeah, I can see your faces there of what on earth. The The shoemakers are the name of a genus of Central American butterflies. Where the Grecian part is coming from, I have no idea why they called it that. And the colors of this butterfly in no way correspond to things like the flag of Greece. But it is such a striking, vivid little butterfly. It is pitch black, black as night, and then it has these big, bright orange spots on it. And a couple of tiny little purple spots. It's scientific name, if you're trying to look it up, is Catonephale numilia, which I know is not the easiest name to remember off the top of your head. Males are going to be black with the bright orange spots. The females are going to be a little bit larger. They have more of a hook on the end of their wings. And instead of having the orange spots, they have a yellow stripe down their forewings with a Two rows of little blue dots on the hind wings. That one is a sexually dimorphic species, which is also fun to talk about because so many of the butterflies in the pavilion, you just can't tell the sex at a glance.
Arthur
It's always nice when you can point out and say, Oh, look, we can tell that this one's a male, this one's a female, and visitors get a big kick out of that. Favorite butterfly in the wild? I have to admit I am a bit biased about the tiger swallow tail, which is a common resident in the area, common site during the summertime. I just can't get over how big they are, how elegant they are. They do have some cases where there's that black color morph, which is really cool, and some of them have black on the hind wings, whereas some of them will have with a beautiful blue shading on it, too. So I just feel so lucky that even here in this part of the States, we get these giant butterflies that look like they should be in a rainforest, and they're so pretty.
Mikaela
Those are great pics. Yeah, I just saw my first tiger swallow tail this past weekend. Oh, really? On the Eastern shore. Yeah, At Atkins.
Emily
Of course. Nice.
Mikaela
Yeah. I also saw a zebra swallow tail while I was out there, Rachel.
Rachel
I I saw a zebra on one of those really warm days that we had in January or February. Remember when we had that really weird time? And I was like, oh, honey.
Mikaela
I'm sorry.
Arthur
I love those zebra swalters. I only ever see those at the C&O Canal. It's like, that's the only place I see them, but every time I go there in the summer, I will see them. It's really cool. Oh, neat.
Mikaela
They must have a good population of papa down there then. Yeah, they must. Those are great pics.
Emily
One of the other questions we always ask everyone who comes on the podcast is, how did you get into, in this case, entomology and butterflies as a career? And How did you manage to score such an amazing job working at the Smithsonian, too?
Arthur
Well, I started doing stuff like this when I was very young. When I was 13 years old, I started volunteering at the Brookside Garden's Wings of Fancy Butterfly Pavilion?
Emily
I used to work at that one, too.
Arthur
That place is so, so wonderful. And they let you volunteer that young if an adult volunteers with you. So my mom would come and volunteer with me. And I did that throughout through high school. And at that point, once I was in high school and getting into college, I was a lot more mobile. So I found the one at the Natural History Museum, which had only recently opened, and I started volunteering there during the summertime. And eventually, I guess I did a really good job volunteering there because they asked me if I would be willing to help them out for a small job working in the Butterfly Pavilion There was a scheduling conflict with a new person that was coming on, and they had this several week gap where they needed someone to fill in for that person. So they asked me to do so, and that's how I got my foot on the door there. And then I would just keep coming back and working each summer in the Butterfly Pavilion as a contractor. I was also working in the Insect Zoo, too. I would bounce back and forth between both of them, whichever one they would need help opening on each day.
Arthur
So for all the time I have spent working in the Butterfly Pavilion, I have also spent just about that same amount of time in the Insect Zoo, taking care of all the tarantulas and beetles and grasshoppers. I don't just work with the butterflies. Then once I graduated college, I just started contracting there full-time until eventually I became a full-time staff member there. And that's really it. Most of my adult life has been involved with the Butterfly Pavilion and Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian.
Rachel
That's pretty awesome.
Mikaela
Yeah, that's a pretty special experience. It is.
Arthur
I do feel very lucky to have achieved this.
Rachel
So Do you have a favorite butterfly or moth fact that you would like to share?
Arthur
Yes. And oh, boy, I don't know which ones to choose from. I'm going to avoid talking about butterfly poison, because when I get started talking about butterfly poison, I can't stop.
Emily
Wait, are you talking about butterflies that can be used for poison, or ways to poison butterflies? Because if there's butterflies that can be used to poison people, we have to I know this.
Rachel
I think this is a good October episode.
Mikaela
I was going to say, do we have another episode we could make out of just butterfly poison?
Arthur
There's a lot of different poisons out there that butterflies use. There aren't any butterflies that are poisonous, say, a poison dart frog, because those things, a single one of those can kill hundreds of people. There are no butterflies at that level. Nothing that will even kill you if you consume one of them. But there are plenty that will make you plenty sick. I guess a really silly butterfly fact that I've got with regards to poison is a common plant pest called the tobacco horn worm. The tobacco horn worm, it consumes tobacco plants, and it turns out it's an insect that can slightly withstand nicotine, because nicotine is a natural insecticide. It really messes up insects internally. So what the tobacco horn worm does is it will consume tobacco plants, and most of the nicotine that is in its body gets excreted pretty rapidly. So these things do go to the bathroom more frequently than other caterpillars will, because they're just trying to get rid of all this horrific insecticide in their body. But that remaining amount that's in them, it's about 5 % of the nicotine that they still have inside them, gets breathed out through their spiracles, their breathing holes on the side of their body.
Arthur
And that nicotine makes a tiny little cloud around the caterpillar that repels things like predatory ants or wolf spiders. So a wolf spider will come up and literally it's going to have its jaws about to come right down on the caterpillar, and then it gets a whiff of that nicotine cloud and flees the scene. And there's even a name for this. It's called toxic halitosis.
Emily
I love that. They're just That's amazing.
Arthur
They are just constantly... Bad breath, so bad that it's poisonous to other arthropods that are trying to kill them.
Emily
I love that. That is a good fact.
Mikaela
That's like It's one of my most favorite butterfly, I think. It is.
Rachel
Or caterpillar. It's one of my favorite caterpillars. Absolutely.
Emily
I want to go back to the rotting fruit, like how do butterflies eat?
Arthur
Sure. So So all the butterflies in the pavilion, except for the giant socomas that we have, they have a proboscis. So the proboscis is this set of mouth parts that is made from two tube-like structures. When they come out of their chrysalis, you'll see the two little tubes individually moving around. And then as their wings are hardening up, the proboscis also zips together. So these two little tentacles that they have zip into a straw-like structure. Now, when it comes to the rotting fruit or the flower nectar, whichever thing they're trying to get, they will put the end of their proboscis on that, and then they do have a pumping motion that they'll use to get the fluids up into their proboscis and into their stomach.
Rachel
Do you find that some butterflies prefer different fruit more than others?
Arthur
We recently used watermelon, which we honestly haven't done in years. They had some mini watermelons available and none of the regular ones that we get. And the butterflies went nuts trying to get that watermelon. So we are on the look out for those now whenever we can pick them up. The butterflies do tend to prefer the melons and pineapples over something like, say, rotting banana. We do put out bananas here and there, but they just aren't too interested in it. Also, not all the butterflies will go back and forth between the fruit All of our swalotail butterflies are exclusively in the pavilion pollinators, so they don't acknowledge the fruit as a food source. Whereas things like the clipper butterflies or all of our long wings from Ecuador, those will happily consume flour nectar, flour pollen, or they'll land on the fruit and drink the fruit juices as well. And then you've got things like the owl butterflies or the blue morphos, which only feed on the rotting fruit. And people love to hear about how these butterflies only will drink that, or your sweat if they can get to it.
Mikaela
Do you have a salt source in there for them, or a mineral source? I assume you don't use poop or anything.
Arthur
No, we're not putting out any poop for them. Honestly, Sweaty Visitors is a decent salt source for the butterflies that do try to get that. Other times, if the Mister system that We have in the pavilion gets out of whack. Sometimes it's programmed, gets a little too excited and sprays too much water, and water will build up on the floor. The minerals that are on the stone floor, butterflies will try to get at. We'll see them puddling on the ground, which is cute, but we have to move the butterflies because they're in danger of people stepping on them, and we don't want to have a slick floor for visitors to walk on either. When it comes to the rotting fruit, I mentioned that it's fermenting. Believe me, they smell alcohol, and they want alcohol. And if, say, you are in the butterfly pavilion and you've been drinking, not only are you sweating more because it's hot in there, but you are sweating out alcohol, which they are now feverishly trying to get from you. So it turns out butterflies are all lushes. They really want their alcohol. It does benefit them because it makes their flight patterns more randomized, and they become harder targets for the real predators, like birds to catch, just because they are drunkenly zigzagging all over the place.
Arthur
They don't know where they're going. The bird's not going to be able to follow them as easily. But yes, they will drink up all of those juices with that little proboscis. Oh my God, I love it.
Emily
I love it so much. Now I want to have cocktail hour in the Butterfly Pavilion.
Arthur
We've had plenty of evening events. The museum does all sorts of big private evening programs, and on certain occasions, we will have the Butterfly Pavilion open until nine o'clock. We get our share of intoxicated guests at that point, and the butterflies that are still awake will certainly go for them.
Emily
I love it. Oh, man, that's great.
Mikaela
That's a great idea.
Rachel
That's so awesome.
Emily
That being said, I don't think any of us are recommending people just pour alcohol outside for native natural butterflies.
Rachel
No, Let's please not do that.
Emily
Let's let the native... I think planting native plants and providing those food sources naturally is a much better option.
Rachel
Much better option.
Emily
If our listeners want to know more about the Smithsonian Butterfly Pavilion, where should they go to learn more?
Arthur
If listeners have any questions or any follow-up that they want to learn for the Natural History Museum's Butterfly Pavilion, then they can go to Natural History cee. Si. Edu. That's the main web page, and there's plenty to explore on there.
Emily
Well, thank you so much, Arthur, for coming on. We super appreciate this, and I hope this makes our listeners super excited to either come down to the Smithsonian to see their butterfly exhibit or see if they can find a local one, or just go outside and enjoy butterflies in the nature.
Arthur
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful talking with all of you.
Mikaela
Great to talk with you, too.
Rachel
Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoy it, and we'll tune in next month for more gardening tips. If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at umegardenpodcast@gmail. Com, or look us up on Facebook at Garden Thyme Podcast. That's Garden, T-H-Y-M-E. For more information about the University of Maryland Extension and these topics, please check out the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center website at go. UMD. Edu, back slash H-G-I-C. Thanks for listening, and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.
Goodbye.
The Garden Time podcast is a monthly podcast brought to you by the University of Maryland extension, Mikaela Boyle, Senior Agent Associate for Talbot County, Rachel Rhoads, Senior Agent Associate for Queens County, and Emily Zobel, Senior Agent Associate for Dorchester County
University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regards to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.
Emily
Okay, cool. That works, yeah., you nailed it.
Rachel
I know. I didn't screw up. It's amazing. You nailed that closer.
Mikaela
It's amazing. I was like, Oh, she going to make it the whole thing? She did it. She did it. We all screw up.
Arthur
That's so exciting to see how the sausage is made, because I do listen to a lot of podcasts, and I always wonder what it is like behind the scenes for the audience.
Mikaela
I know some people don't do any editing. They just do a straight straight shot. And I don't know how they do that because we're constantly like, Oh, look, a butterfly. We screw up. I just don't know how they do it.
Rachel
We've been really good about being on task for this episode.
Emily
Normally, it's like a two-hour recording session that I have to cut down to 45 minutes. So we were focused today.
Emily
Although I will say the Smithsonian does have some really amazing podcasts as well. I started listening to, I think it's called Behind the Doors, which is one that you guys have, that talks about random items from the Smithsonian Museum, and how they got there, and the history behind it. I was like, here's a rabbit hole I'm spiraling down for podcasting.
Arthur
Because that would be different from, I think it's called the Side Door podcast.
Emily
Oh, maybe it's the same thing.
Arthur
It's something door. It might be. I'm going to be honest, I don't really listen to any of these onion podcast.
Mikaela
Well, now, Emily, you've got me going down the road. I think it is called Side Door.
Emily
It might be the Side... I remember it was something door.
Mikaela
It might be my new listen. I don't know.
Emily
The Smithsonian with something door. They have some cool ones there. Not as cool as ours, but... Obviously.