"False heads" on hairstreak butterflies

The most interesting butterfly-related item I've read this month is an article in American Butterflies magazine (not available online) detailing a report in the Journal of Natural History ("Two heads are better than one: false head allows Calycopis cecrops (Lycaenidae) to escape predation by a Jumping Spider, Phidippus pulcherrimus (Salticidae)"), which describes how hairstreak butterflies use a "false head" on their rear ends to fool predators:

The present study tests the “false head” hypothesis by exposing a hairstreak butterfly, Calycopis cecrops, as well as many other Lepidoptera species as controls, to the attacks of the jumping spider, Phidippus pulcherrimus. The results unambiguously indicate that the “false head” is a very efficient strategy in deflecting attacks from the vital centres of the hairstreak butterfly whereas other similar-sized Lepidoptera fall easy prey.

The report is discussed in detail at the blog of the Florida Museum of Natural History:

When the hairstreak butterfly faced the jumping spider in an enclosed space, the butterfly successfully escaped 100 percent of the time. The study shows jumping spiders may have influenced evolution of some butterfly patterns and behaviors...When 11 other butterfly and moth species from seven different families were exposed to the jumping spider, they were unable to escape attack in every case.

Previously, scientists presumed that it was attacks by birds that drove the evolution of some butterfly wing patterns; now the role of the jumping spider has been delineated.   The jumping spider has superb near vision.  You would too, if you had eyes like this:

Unlike other butterflies, hairstreaks frequently move the hind wings that carry the false head pattern, a behavior that seems to increase in the presence of the spider.

For years I've noticed this back-and-forth "sawing" movement of the hind wings of resting hairstreak butterflies, without imagining that it served any adaptive purpose.  It obviously attracts the spider's attention, so that when the attack is launched...

...what the butterfly loses consists of nonvital structures.  Note also (in the top photo) how the "false head" is enhanced by the presence of the "tails" (which thus look like antennae).  So the function of the tails is not aerodynamic or decorative, but another adaptation for survival.  Fascinating - you learn something every day.

Top photo credit: Daniel Ruyle (aeschylus18917).  Bottom photo credit Andrei Surakov.

Trailer for "The Fifth Estate"

YouTube link.

The trailer for Bill Condon’s WikiLeaks movie, “The Fifth Estate” has arrived, starring “Sherlock” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” star Benedict Cumberbatch as a singularly-focused Julian Assange.

Assange, however, has consistently criticized the project, calling it “a massive propaganda attack” on the organization and even refused to meet with Cumberbatch.

From within London’s Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange remains in hiding, he connected with Oxford University students via Internet and slammed the film, which allegedly contains scenes regarding a nuclear weapons program in Iran. ”How does this have anything to do with us?… How is it that a lie gets into a script about WikiLeaks?” he asked. He called the scenes “an attack against us [WikiLeaks]” as well as “an attack against Iran.” “It fans the flames to start a war with Iran,” he said.

Selections from Uncle Shelby's ABZ book

Via Vintage Kids' Books My Kids Love (where there are several more).

Who comes up with ideas like these?

Armed nonuniformed men invade an Oregon school to test the staff's readiness for a hostage situation:

Two masked men wearing hoodies and wielding handguns burst into the Pine Eagle Charter School in this tiny rural community on Friday. Students were at home for an in-service day, so the gunmen headed into a meeting room full of teachers and opened fire.

Someone figured out in a few seconds that the bullets were not drawing blood because they were blanks and the exercise was a drill, designed to test Pine Eagle's preparation for an assault by "active shooters" who were, in reality, members of the school staff. But those few seconds left everybody plenty scared.

Principal Cammie DeCastro said it became clear very quickly just how many of the school's 15 teachers would have survived. The answer: "Not many," she said. 

The Reddit thread discusses what might have happened had one of the "victim" teachers responded with lethal force.

Meanwhile, in Virginia plainclothes police officers try to apprehend a female student.  She resists...

On April 11, Elizabeth Daly bought a carton of sparkling water, cookie dough and ice cream at a Charlottesville store. She drove off when she was confronted by plainclothes ABC agents after they suspected the 20-year-old of purchasing beer... The woman was charged with two felonies after she attempted to flee the agents.

They later dropped the charges, but had she run over them while driving away, I would have given her the benefit of doubt for fleeing a possible attempted rape/carjacking.

Enjoy watching dominos fall? Got ten minutes?

YouTube link.

It took 12 people eight days to set up 277,275 dominoes. Last Friday, 272,297 of them were toppled at Wilhelm-Lückert Gym in Büdingen, Germany at the Sinners Domino Entertainment event.

Via Neatorama.

Children of Ethiopia's Omo tribes

Photos by Hans Silvestre, from a gallery in The Daily Mail, via Curiosités de Titam. The photos are from the book 'Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa', published by Thames and Hudson.

Brassieres losing support

Excerpts from an article in the StarTribune:

Wearing a bra might actually make your breasts sag.  At least that’s the conclusion drawn by Jean-Denis Rouillon, a professor at the University of Besançon in France. For the past 15 years, Rouillon has been diligently taking a slide rule and caliper to the breasts of 320 women, ages 18 to 35, to measure any changes, particularly the relationship of the nipple to the shoulder...

The sports science expert told France Info radio that “bras are a false necessity,” and that “medically, physiologically, anatomically — breasts gain no benefit from being denied gravity. On the contrary, they get saggier with a bra.”..

According to the French study, that “lift” allows ligaments that support breast tissue to become weak. Rouillon said that women who did not wear bras had, on average, “nipples [that] lifted on average seven millimetres in one year in relation to the shoulders,” according to an account in the Connexion, France’s English language newspaper. (That’s about a quarter-inch.) Thus, he concluded, breasts would gain more tone and be better able to support themselves if no bra was used...

Note the study has not yet been peer-reviewed.  More at the link.

Photo ("Bra authority Ida Rosenthal measured a model for a brassiere in New York in 1950") credit: Bob Wands/ Associated Press.