www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Thank you, Callum, for helpful reply.

1. They sound a bit high-powered for me, but if I ever decide to breed any butterflies I may well join.

2. Point taken!

3. On your first point, as I think you were expecting, I do not accept that it is never right to kill a creature for human leisure etc. I realise that Albert Schweitzer would have thought this, but most of us are quite willing to kill ants, wasps etc. My understanding is that insects are non sentient creatures, so the ethical arguments really centre round issues of preserving the environment, which brings us to your second point.

It is interesting to hear that stock from breeders has to come from the wild only 2 or 3 generations back. Even so, would not a couple of butterflies produce many more than that in two generations? And even if it would be equivalent to killing wild insects, for common ones I do not see the problem unless you are someone who thinks it is never right to kill a wild insect.

The most difficult issue for me from what I have heard is the warning about not releasing bred insects into the wild - any shop bought insects, in the view of some, but certainly not unless they are mobile. I wonder if the danger isn't overstated, but feel I must accept the advice of those who know more than me. So, say I were to buy 5 Elephant Hawk Moth pupae, and 4 hatched into lovely moths. I, personally, would have no qualms about killing one for my collection. But, even if it is not ethically wrong, I would hate the thought of killing the other 3. And, assuming they are not a mobile species (and I don't know) I couldn't release them into the wild either. So not viable.

johnclarke wrote:..I do not accept that it is never right to kill a creature for human leisure etc. I realise that Albert Schweitzer would have thought this, but most of us are quite willing to kill ants, wasps etc...

I don't think that's particularly relevant, John. Ants & wasps can sometimes be considered harmful pests so if they are to be eradicated then it's not for purely cosmetic reasons.

Killing butterflies that have been reared merely to adorn a collection tray IS a cosmetic pursuit undertaken for 'leisure' reasons.

The two things are completely different.

For instance, I would never have a problem with Siberians killing animals for their fur. After all, if you live in a climate that can be -40c during winter, it stands to reason that clothing yourself in such attire gives you a better chance of survival via protection from the cold.

However, killing animals with fur to clothe catwalk models in temperate Paris does NOT have survival implications; it is purely for fashion. For that reason, I don't support it.

Others may disagree, but I see no justification for killing animals (whatever form they may take) merely to keep their corpses as 'trophies'. By all means, kill a lion if you're a Masai and it's continually devastating your precious herd of cows, but if you're an American dentist don't fly out to Zimbabwe just so you can fire a bullet into an Alpha male from the safety of your Jeep and then get a taxidermist to deliver the head across the Atlantic so you can display it on your living room wall.

David, you say killing ants is not a 'cosmetic' act. But surely, it is! And greenfly. Gardeners kill them so that their flowers look better. It's all about cosmetics!

I would go further. Arguments about lions are misleading because they are sentient creatures. Ethically insects, not being sentient, are closer to plants. Is it ethical to pick flowers to decorate the hall? To me, killing insects for display is closely analogous to this except for the issue of sustainability of populations, which I fully accept.

I agree entirely with David that pest control is not usually the same as killing for leisure. Pest control in a flower-garden is an interesting ethical conundrum, I suppose, although thankfully I don't know many gardeners who take such a hard line - most are happy to see their flowers visited by bees and butterflies! Pest control in a vegetable garden (e.g. greenfly on tomato plants!), of course, is linked to production, not leisure.

johnclarke wrote:Arguments about lions are misleading because they are sentient creatures. Ethically insects, not being sentient, are closer to plants. Is it ethical to pick flowers to decorate the hall? To me, killing insects for display is closely analogous to this except for the issue of sustainability of populations, which I fully accept.

I have a number of serious issues with this argument. The first is that it is incorrect to claim so stridently that insects are not sentient. They are (probably) capable of feeling pain - certainly, we can state that they have physiological structures that are analogous to the structures through which we experience pain (e.g. a central nervous system and brain), and that when exposed to relevant stimuli, they display behaviours that, in a vertebrate, we would interpret as being responses to pain. They can have complex societal hierarchies and behaviours, some of which could suggest an awareness of self (e.g. the waggle-dance of honeybees). None of this proves beyond doubt that they are sentient, but it is certainly wrong to state with certainty that they are not - my reading this evening suggests that this is still an area of open debate amongst scientists in that field. You draw the analogy with plants, but almost none of this paragraph is true for plants, which at most show localised hormonal responses to physical damage.

Secondly, bear in mind that in the vast majority of cases, picking a flower is not fatal to the plant (except perhaps in the case of an annual plant, if 100% of flowers were picked). Killing an insect is... well, fatal!

johnclarke wrote:So, say I were to buy 5 Elephant Hawk Moth pupae, and 4 hatched into lovely moths. I, personally, would have no qualms about killing one for my collection. But, even if it is not ethically wrong, I would hate the thought of killing the other 3. And, assuming they are not a mobile species (and I don't know) I couldn't release them into the wild either. So not viable.

Accepting that, for common, widespread and mobile species only, the risk to natural populations from purchasing larvae/pupae is low: what is to prevent you from keeping the remaining 3 moths in a flight cage, providing them with nectar, to live out their full lifespan and give you several weeks of pleasure? Hawkmoths (and butterflies) are easy to keep in this way. For that matter, what is to prevent you from keeping all 4 in this manner!

However you dress this up what you are proposing is still trophy hunting. If admiring the beauty of something means you have to kill it in order to “possess” it’s beauty then that is a very sad concept. The modern way ‘if you will’ is to capture the beauty of a butterfly with a photograph, modern digital cameras do a better job than our own eyes can regarding detail. This way you can capture a butterfly without the need for a killing jar. If you are not a photographer there are more books, websites, prints of butterflies than you could wish for. However if you are determined to pursue this course then it is unlikely anything said here will change your mind. Human beings are very good at self justifying to get what they want.

Ask yourself, what do you want to get out of this that cannot be achieved without killing anything? Is the value of a living organism only governed by your whims and fancies?

James.

johnclarke wrote:..So, say I were to buy 5 Elephant Hawk Moth pupae, and 4 hatched into lovely moths. I, personally, would have no qualms about killing one for my collection. But, even if it is not ethically wrong, I would hate the thought of killing the other 3.

....and what would you do if only one emerged?

Thanks, Callum. Let me comment on your 3 points:

1. Greenfly etc. I don't feel your attempt to divide production from pleasure works. I made the point that gardeners kill greenfly so that their flowers look nice (pleasure), and you countered by saying that other gardeners spray their tomato plants (food production). That doesn't alter the fact that most of us consider it OK for gardeners to kill the greenfly on their roses. Unless your point is that it is OK for the tomato guys, but the ones who spray their roses are immoral? Personally, I would go on to argue that in our well-off country even the tomato ones are for pleasure rather than for necessity (eg spraying malaria mosquitos.)

2. Are insects sentient? Point taken. I have always assumed they were not, but I have googled a few articles and web discussions, and I accept that it is still an open question. Different people say yes, no, don't know, and even that some insects are sentient and not others. But if they are sentient in some way it still leaves the question of what that really feels like for an animal with a tiny brain. One article gave an example of a (grasshopper? I can't remember) continuing to eat while it itself was being eaten by a preying mantis, implying that the instinct to eat was more powerful than the feeling of being eaten! But if insects do feel pain in some way, I would feel much worse about poisoning a colony of thousands of ants than killing one butterfly or moth.

3. Flight cage for elephant hawk moths etc. Brilliant, thank you! 2 questions: is a flight cage the same size as a rearing cage, or should it be bigger? And, I realise this is probably very basic, but where do I get nectar? Would, for example, water with sugar added be OK?

CallumMac wrote:I agree entirely with David that pest control is not usually the same as killing for leisure. Pest control in a flower-garden is an interesting ethical conundrum, I suppose, although thankfully I don't know many gardeners who take such a hard line - most are happy to see their flowers visited by bees and butterflies! Pest control in a vegetable garden (e.g. greenfly on tomato plants!), of course, is linked to production, not leisure.

johnclarke wrote:Arguments about lions are misleading because they are sentient creatures. Ethically insects, not being sentient, are closer to plants. Is it ethical to pick flowers to decorate the hall? To me, killing insects for display is closely analogous to this except for the issue of sustainability of populations, which I fully accept.

I have a number of serious issues with this argument. The first is that it is incorrect to claim so stridently that insects are not sentient. They are (probably) capable of feeling pain - certainly, we can state that they have physiological structures that are analogous to the structures through which we experience pain (e.g. a central nervous system and brain), and that when exposed to relevant stimuli, they display behaviours that, in a vertebrate, we would interpret as being responses to pain. They can have complex societal hierarchies and behaviours, some of which could suggest an awareness of self (e.g. the waggle-dance of honeybees). None of this proves beyond doubt that they are sentient, but it is certainly wrong to state with certainty that they are not - my reading this evening suggests that this is still an area of open debate amongst scientists in that field. You draw the analogy with plants, but almost none of this paragraph is true for plants, which at most show localised hormonal responses to physical damage.

Secondly, bear in mind that in the vast majority of cases, picking a flower is not fatal to the plant (except perhaps in the case of an annual plant, if 100% of flowers were picked). Killing an insect is... well, fatal!

johnclarke wrote:So, say I were to buy 5 Elephant Hawk Moth pupae, and 4 hatched into lovely moths. I, personally, would have no qualms about killing one for my collection. But, even if it is not ethically wrong, I would hate the thought of killing the other 3. And, assuming they are not a mobile species (and I don't know) I couldn't release them into the wild either. So not viable.

Accepting that, for common, widespread and mobile species only, the risk to natural populations from purchasing larvae/pupae is low: what is to prevent you from keeping the remaining 3 moths in a flight cage, providing them with nectar, to live out their full lifespan and give you several weeks of pleasure? Hawkmoths (and butterflies) are easy to keep in this way. For that matter, what is to prevent you from keeping all 4 in this manner!