The Pyatigorsk museum boasts more than simply North Caucasus butterflies.
Scientist say that insects estimate over 3 million species. I don’t know for sure but I believe that no less than a thousand of them were moved to the right wing of Pyatigorsk Academic Gallery, on Mashuk Mountain. Valentin Tikhonov, an entomologist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, spent 20 years collecting butterflies, scorpions, beetles and spiders. He didn’t travel through the length and breadth of the North Caucasus only.
“Different insects need different traps. Some like fruit, others like sweets. Some butterflies can be caught using human waste products. Sugar and rum are added and then the substance is spread on the sandbanks and near water. The butterflies don’t fly away after drinking it, you can catch them with bare hands. Hundreds of butterflies of different colours gather together making the sandbank colourful – yellow, green, blue, - it’s an amazing picture.” – he went on. According to Tikhonov, some butterflies are attracted using a piece of blue plastic bag. It’s a large butterfly with blue nacreous wings, it soars too high to catch it. A male butterflies starts coming down after seeing a piece of blue plastic bag, thinking it’s a female. The rest is only a matter of skill.
The Pyatigorsk museum is a two-storeyed building. Dead butterflies can be found on the top floor. They are arranged according to their areal on beautiful stands in geometrical order: in forms of circles, diamonds, crosses. Preserving this collection requires special temperature and light conditions. That is why there is always half-darkness in the museum, the lights turn on automatically, when a person comes up to a stand.
The West has an advanced tradition of collecting insects. It is a smoothly running widespread business there. For example, the world’s largest butterfly, Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing, inhabits the Papua Island. Both the population and the authorities of Papua zealously protect those butterflies from being taken away from their areal. Any attempts to of illegal trafficking is punished with a prison sentence. This is why, people say, collectors would sell two dried up Queen Alexandra’s Birdwings for over 5 thousand dollars. Some tropical islands have special farms raising butterflies throughout the whole year. They are simply greenhouses where different kinds of species, including rare ones, are born, grow up and pupate.
But how do butterflies appear in Pyatigorsk? It is impossible to visit all countries with rare species. Dried up adult butterflies are so fragile that they can’t be sent by mail. But it turns out there is a way. You can send pupae in special packages to any country in the world. Provided with necessary heat and light the pupae turn into beautiful winged creatures. They need a lot of nice to stretch and dry up their wings. Then every butterfly has different fate. Some get an injection of ammonium chloride becoming an ornament for centuries. A butterfly’s beauty can be preserved for decades and even centuries if stored properly. Others can live for a few hours as an exquisite surprise, when hundreds of colourful butterflies are released on a banquet. And some for further breeding.
In other words, not all the museum’s displays come from nature. Some butterlies didn’t even get a chance to fly, they were mortified using ester. But, certainly, some of them were caught. For example, the ones from North Caucasus.
A few years ago the head of the museum carried out an unusual experiment: he set up a net on the central part of the second floor and sent tens of butterflies flying freely. Valentin was raising every single one of them himself and was feeding them by hand. “We had to pick them up gently by their wings, open their proboscis and dip it into honey mixture. They drank lots of it becoming fat, they spend a lot of time idle,” – the entomologist said.
Our guest book is filled with gratitude comments. It even has unusual autographs, like: “I’m always glad to visit this place again. With kind regards. Zhirinovski Vova.”
Lada Ledeniova, Pyatigorsk. Specially for VK
