Today's real post is about a ridiculously obscure butterfly in the Windmill group, found in China.
For those who came in late, there is a large group of large black swallowtail butterflies, some nicknamed batwings and some nicknamed windmills, that flit around southern Asia. Ecologically they're somewhat helpful to humankind, but because they have black wings and some have vulture-like red heads, there's a tradition of giving them Halloween-themed names. Atrophaneura daemonius literally means "black-nerved-wings demon." The position of this web site is that that's harsh, even though the butterfly does seem to have proved itself devilishly difficult to find.
Well, when people call you names like that, don't you want to avoid them? If so, you should stand with Scott Adams, whose latest bid for attention has got people calling him everything but a child of God. I know what he said was ugly, but censorship is even uglier.
We should stay away from people who call us "devils" and say it's not okay to be us and otherwise express hate toward us, especially when that hate is based on things we can't help. It is not actually possible to spot those people by looking at them, but when the hate is genuinely based on perceived "race" rather than on things like being overtly "gay" or known to be poor, it is a little more likely to be expressed by Black Americans toward White ones than vice versa. And why is that? Probably because White Americans have felt that it was some sort of duty to put up with it, as if applauding Black people's hatespews today were some sort of reparation for slavery or some such idiotic idea.
Maya Angelou had some light to shed on the reasons why Black Americans have not been overwhelmed with love for those who applauded a play in which she and other characters expressed hateful ideas, but this post does not have time to go all the way back for those who came in all that late. If your great-great-great-great-grandfather owned slaves and you want to make reparations to them, why not write to them and ask...if your many-greats-grandfather never offered his ex-slaves jobs or wages, offering jobs or wages might be a place to start, if you can. This post is not about Black, Red, and White people. It is about black-red-and-white butterflies.
Little is known about the species most recently called Byasa daemonius. Some have called them a sub-species of alcinous; some have identified sub-species within the species. The link below is to an old document (printed in French) that describes the differences between daemonius and alcinous, noting that daemonius can have has a brownish or greenish-black color and may not have clearly visible red spots. The white patches on the inside edges of the male's hind wings are furry. Like some of the other Atrophaneura, the wings can look white in some lights, with only the "nerves" or veins picked out in black.
Gao Chen has documented how the almost microscopic beadlets of texture on the bead-like eggs of this butterfly contain aristolochic acid and protect the eggs from ants. It's possible for the eggs to lack acid coating, in which case, as the photo at the bottom of the montage shows, ants eat them.
Even typical wingspans are not available for this species, though the white-reflecting individual shown looks at least as big as our Tiger Swallowtails, probably bigger if the plant is similar to our mimosas. Only one photo illustrates this species at most web sites, if any illustration is given at all, and it's a sad, faded museum piece.
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