Though little information and no live photos of this week's butterfly have been donated to Wikipedia, a great deal has been published about this somewhat rare but very popular, big, showy species. Atrophaneura sycorax (not reclassified since Atrophaneura was separated from Papilio) has everything a butterfly needs to become a tourist attraction. It's big enough to cover some people's hands, it's rare in all times and places and found at all in only a few times and places, it has clean habits that may be slightly helpful to humans (it checks the growth of vines that might pull down trees), and it even has a peculiar face that makes an amusing story. Reading about how this butterfly got its name made me laugh.
Most of the species in the genus Atrophaneura were named after characters from literature. Atrophaneura sycorax may be the most recent character honored with a butterfly species name; Shakespeare seems to have invented this name, probably from the Latin word corax, a raven, for the supervillain in The Tempest in 1611. He did not explain whether the first part of the name was influenced by sus, a swine, or psych-, of the soul, or both
Photo by Gancw1.
In The Tempest Sycorax never appears onstage. She's been banished from the island for years and is probably dead, but her wicked witchcraft is still remembered. Her functions in the play include, primarily, making a statement about Renaissance Europe's belief in "black" or satanic magic that was treated as the worst of crimes, as distinct from "white" or lawful magic that was tolerated. Sycorax, an African woman with no specific pedigree or patron, ruled the island before Prospero, an Italian aristocrat not (yet) excommunicated from the Catholic church, moved in. For a while they were such close friends that they produced a son. His physical defects make his father call him a "monster" and may have contributed to his father's perception of his mother as "the foul witch" and "the blue-eyed hag." At the time when the play is taking place Prospero is prosperous, wielding power by reminding people how much nicer than Sycorax he is--but as we see him, during the play, he does the same sort of unpleasant things she's remembered as having done. Men like Prospero, only without the supernatural powers Shakespeare seems willing to believe Prospero has, were the first scientists but their morality was, as The Tempest shows, questionable--especially when they persecuted the "witches" who failed to join, or were barred from joining, their scholarly circles. Nobody on the island misses Sycorax but the question arises whether they'll miss Prospero, either.
That seems like a lot of baggage to load onto an innocent butterfly, but Atrophaneura sycorax is big--sometimes described as a "giant," with a wingspan between four and six inches--and it eats only the poisonous vines in the genera Aristolochia and Thottea from which it gets its black-white-and-not-much-red coloring. Any larger predator that eats any of the Atrophaneuras will regret it. Most will remember the experience and avoid all the Red-Bodied Swallowtails, the Black-Bodied Swallowtails, and other butterflies that resemble them, for many years.
Photo by Dilophoboa. Shakespeare specified that Sycorax was Algerian--he may have got the idea from a report of a female witch having been banished from Algiers. A typical Algerian woman's clothes or hair might have suggested a name that meant "crow,." Blue eyes, which Shakespeare's Sycorax had, would have helped Sycorax stand out in a crowd. Atrophaneura sycorax's spots don't look like eyes to me, but they can be blue.
Also like the fictional character for whom they were named, A. sycorax live primarily on tropical islands: Java, Sumatra, Malaysia. They are somewhat rare, as very large butterflies and moths tend to be. When they are found on a new island or on the mainland, they are noticed and their appearance becomes a news item. There may or may not be a distinct subspecies hiroyukii that are truly native to one or two small Indonesian islands; Wikipedia has a page for hiroyukii but the page has yet to be filled in with information. Web sites exist to document the activities of individuals living in nature parks. They are found in Burma and sometimes flit into other countries nearby--like Thailand, where this one was photographed by Antonio Giudici. (This species appears on several checklists for butterflies in Thailand but it is very rare there.)
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Walter Rothschild thought variations in different sycorax populations were not great or consistent enough to be classified as subspecies. Others disagreed, especially about Atrophaneura sycorax egertoni, which was originally classified as Papilio egertoni, a separate species. More recent sources generally agree that A. sycorax sycorax and A.s. egertoni are distinct subspecies; some recognize one or more others. All have the typical Atrophaneura color pattern as described by H. Grose Smith, the first naturalist to document the species. His description is a computer transcription from an old periodical::
"
by h. geose smith.
Papilio Sycorax.
Upper-side. Anterior-wings olive-brown, the longitudinal rays in the cell, the nervures, and broad bands between the nervures dark olive-brown. Posterior-wings : the inner half somewhat greener than the anterior- wings, the outer half greenish grey, in the middle of which between the nervures is a row of five large conical black spots, the two upper spots extending to the cell on the inner side ; on the outer margin are five, large, black, quadrate spots confluent on the outer margin, the spot nearest the upper angle is also confluent on the inside with the upper spot of the central row. The outer margin ashy-grey, deeply indentated between the nervures.
Under-side. Both wings as above, but much lighter, and the outer row of spots on the margin of the posterior-wings are distinct. Head and collar ashy-grey. Abdomen greenish-grey above, underneath orange,:t\vo rows of black spots on either Bide. Exp. 6 in.
Hah. : Sumatra (Bock). A grand insect, nearest to P. Friapus.
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W.L. Distant considered Papilio egertoni a "remarkably distinct species," but although the individual he described was large even for sycorax and may have had a different pattern on her hind wings, egertoni seemed to others to be simply the extreme end of a range of subspecies variation. In the majority of specimens photographed, dead or alive, across subspecies, the lighter color pattern on the hind wings would be more easily described as a wide band of white, grey, or pale blue with black spots. Only a few show distinct light spots on a dark background as described by Distant.
Photo by Seagull.
Melaka Laboratories' captive-bred specimen looks small for sycorax, but shows the kind of spots Distant described on his egertoni. See it fan its human's hand on Facebook at
Males are more likely to be bright clear blue-black, and females to fade to brown, as in other species of Atrophaneura. Also like other Atrophaneuras, male and female size ranges overlap, but females average a little larger than males. For Batwings, Liew observes (see below), the females look almost like some of the smaller Birdwings--but they have rounded hind wings with no "tails," as distinct from the Birdwings, whose stubby little hind wings seem all "tail." Both sexes can show the iridescent greenish color, and have blue spots on their hind wings.
In museums, when their hind wings are spread out, some males show very large scent folds. Presumably they want it to be very clear to other butterflies that they are not merely overgrown priapus or hageni, which also have pale heads.. (Rothschild reclassified as sycorax some museum specimens that had been accepted as large priapus.) Most authors didn't mention sycorax having an odor, but one said that they "exude bad smells." ("Foul witch!") Their scent may contain one of those chemicals that only some humans can smell.
This photo by GC Gan shows the unusual coloring of the head. Does it look more like a black head draped in a white scarf, or a white head with a black mask? From above only the beady black eyes shown on the sides of the white head.
As of today, Wikipedia's description of these butterflies contains a translation error. Someone has translated the word for the abdominal section of an insect as "body" and thus claimed that the entire body is covered in fine yellow hair. As shown, the thorax and face are black; the back of the head is yellow or white. The abdomen shows black around the breathing pores, but is mostly yellow, often a bright school bus yellow. French Wikipedia has corrected this:
The pale head extends past the black thorax and allows sycorax to share priapus's nickname of White-Headed Swallowtail.
Fair use of a photo found at a site that asks people not only to credit the photographers but to ask their permission to use their pictures...and then provides no information about the photographers, not even a screen name.
Although all the Atrophaneuras make toxic meals, and some exude scents strong enough to be noticed (and sometimes disliked) by humans, most of them are exclusively pollinators, not easy to photograph on damp ground, much less on the dung or carrion some other butterflies love. They are one species that don't annoy wounded hikers by slurping up their sweat, tears, or even blood. They usually fly at the altitude of the flowers they are pollinating, which can make them easy to overlook, or more precisely underlook, in forest habitats like this one.
Photo byNLLilew66butterflies.blogspot.com. It's a nature park in Malaysia where sycorax are often seen. NL Liew's records, filled in as updates on a post created during a population irruption in 2014, show that this tropical species' life cycle is shorter (or longer?) than a full year. Scrolling down through Liew's live photos, we come to a faded old female whose beady little eye iridesces distinctly blue.
Only in 2018 was Atrophaneura sycorax successfully bred in captivity. No link to the newspaper report of that incident that's available online, because when you click on the link Google provides you don't see any actual story, just a lot of ads and a demand that you pay for an online subscription.
The caterpillar, like the butterfly, shows less black and red, more white coloring than some of the Atrophaneuras.
Photo by Kctsang2. As the photo suggests, these are large caterpillars, with appetites in proportion to their size. Though the vines they live on are big, fast-growing tropical plants, the caterpillars can defoliate a vine, then "girdle" the stem afrerward...and in the precarious balance of nature, the vines are able to grow back from their roots, so the cycle continues.
Like other swallowtail caterpillars, they go through five different skins, each skin bigger and slightly more colorful than the one before, between the inert egg stage and the inert pupa stage. The caterpillar photographed above was captive-bred, not an especially large individual. If its human's fingers are two and a half to three inches long, then the caterpillar was between four and five inches. Harmless unless swallowed, it was allowed to crawl over its human's fingers in a trendy but confusing way to illustrate its size to people who may be confused by inches, centimeters, and older culture-specific units of measurement.
All swallowtail caterpillars have slightly wider "shoulder" segments that contain an osmeterium, or "stink horns," of erectile tissue that pops out from between folds of flesh lubricated with the species-specific scent. Most species whose scent has been described by humans are said to smell sweet and fruity, perhaps like ripe pineapples or mangoes. Some of the Atrophaneuras are said to smell more musky and disagreeable.
The pupa, like these photographed by Tuahmaulana, also fits into the general Atrophaneura pattern while looking unique.
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