face only a mother could love..

arlon · Post by **arlon** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 9:05 pm

American snout butterfly.. Strange looking little butterfly.
D50, 1/200 sec, onboard flash, 55mm micro nikkor

For larger image click HERE.

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 11:09 pm

It's Concorde! Does the nose droop on landing?

Nice picture Arlon.

DaveW

Bruce Williams · Post by **Bruce Williams** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 1:05 am

Now there's a butterfly with attitude - first time I've seen one of these too. Was it perched on top of the twig or have you rotated the image 90 degrees acw?

Nice shot!

Bruce

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 2:34 am

That is one unusual butterfly. Can't say as I personally, have ever seen one. Great shot, if I were to compare it to something, I would say it looks like an ant eater in drag.

arlon · Post by **arlon** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 4:27 am

Thought he looked like an aadrvark imitation. Not rotated, just managed to catch him perched pretty well horizontal.

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 6:32 am

A great photo and subject arlon. I bet it has something to do with reaching that "silly mm longer" down the flower.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 9:00 am

An excellent picture indeed.

About the Snout Butterflies (family Libytheidae), the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies writes that

Fewer than a dozen species worldwide; 2 in North America. Although Libytheidae is the smallest family of butterflies, it is represented on every continent populated by butterflies. Such a pattern suggests an ancient lineage; indeed, snouts are found in fossil shales some 30 million years old.

Snout butterflies have extraordinarily long, beaklike palpi that make up the "snout," which has no obvious specialized function.

Nice catch!

--Rik

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 9:46 am

"Snout butterflies have extraordinarily long, beaklike palpi that make up the "snout," which has no obvious specialized function."

I have always maintained Darwin got his emphasis wrong regarding survival of the fittest. I would maintain evolution works the other way around by simply eliminating only the terminally unfit. As long as a feature in non detrimental to survival, and many such are thrown up by mutations, the creature will survive.

Extreme selection only tends to take place in the harshest of habitats. In more friendlier climes extreme diversions will continue to exist (coral reefs for instance). Ultra specialisation for a specific habitat can be a danger for evolution because should conditions change they will probably be unfitted to the new situation and die out.

Given a large range of variation and different degrees of suitability for the present habitat, should conditions change markedly, probably one of the variants will suit the new circumstances. If only the fittest for a set niche had survived in the past, changes to conditions would now have wiped out most of the flora and fauna of the world.

DaveW

jmlphoto · Post by **jmlphoto** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 10:23 am

it looks like some sort of cartoon character. perfect capture of this weird butterfly.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 6:19 pm

DaveW wrote:As long as a feature in non detrimental to survival, and many such are thrown up by mutations, the creature will survive.

True, but...

Every feature of an organism imposes some cost to create it.

The energy and proteins that went into creating those palps could equally well have gone into larger reproductive organs, for example -- the better to lay more eggs.

Those sorts of tradeoffs are pretty "easy" for organisms to optimize, since they just require tweaking of the regulatory mechanisms.

The fact that these butterflies still have big snouts after all these years is pretty good evidence that big snouts are better than small, in the overall context of these butterflies.

By the way, that phrase about "Survival of the fittest" was actually coined by Herbert Spencer --- an economist. What Darwin wrote was that

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

And as Darwin understood very well, the whole issue is not really about who lives and who dies. It's about reproductive success -- who leaves the most offspring, on average.

For some reason, among the snout butterflies, that seems to be the individuals with big snouts. Exactly why is anybody's guess.

--Rik

MacroLuv · Post by **MacroLuv** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 11:05 pm

Maybe the only reason is that bigger snouts are irresistible for their mates!

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 4:55 am

MacroLuv wrote:Maybe the only reason is that bigger snouts are irresistible for their mates!

Yep, that could very well be the only reason. Tails on a peacock, and all that...

--Rik

tpe · Post by **tpe** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 1:58 pm

LOL, is this a he or a she, if it were a she, cleopatera in asterix comes to mind (what a beautiful nose), and if it were a he, then it would have to be cerano de bergerac, and his jokes about the bigger the nose the bigger the, err, well there may be kids about, so forget that, but it does lead to the idea of the peacocks tail, if he can carry all that extra stuff about then he must have a really good gene sack:), and make a very nice picture to boot.

tim

Erland R.N. · Post by **Erland R.N.** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 5:41 pm

my 1st thought: someone has been photoshopping, stretching part of the image :-)

Great photo indeed, and what a snout.

cheers
Erland