A Learning

[kaberett]

I finally discovered, a few weeks ago, that if you want to find images of the chrysalis of a particular species of butterfly, including the scientific name in the search string helps a lot.

The internet is a wonderful thing and I'm very glad I don't have to interlibrary loan entomological textbooks the old-fashioned way.

(I've been gently mulling the concept of a tattoo including a chrysalis for Some Time Now; for reasons, I am inclined toward the peacock butterfly; its binomial is Aglais io. And yes, now I know the wikipedia page has a helpful illustration, but this didn't occur to me when I first started idly looking...)

Comments

[vass]

That's a really nice idea for a tattoo.

[kaberett]

I shall attempt to remember to infodump at you about it in more detail!

The only good language is a dead language...

[hairyears]

Same problem for anything involving wild bees: the local names are an inconsistent mess, and the only way to find usable information is to use the Linnaean systematic name.

...Which is great, if you can start with a rough guess at the genus; and hopeless if you can't, because you're left working through the published identification 'Key', and that requires a fair bit of prior knowledge all of which is published in Latin.

[lokifan]

The internet is a wonderful thing and I'm very glad I don't have to interlibrary loan entomological textbooks the old-fashioned way.

Right??

That's a gorgeous butterfly! Would you have it done in full colour?

[kaberett]

Very much still to be decided! If I were going to get butterfly as well as chrysalis it almost certainly would be but I continue to dither...