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I remember reading this through HN a long time ago, and finding that it made solid points, and sharing it with several people over the years. However, I have wi

I remember reading this through HN a long time ago, and finding that it made solid points, and sharing it with several people over the years. However, I have wisened over the years and feel that I better understand what is worthwhile being pedantic about. Visual cultural representations of things don't have to look like the thing they are showing (the heart symbol doesn't look like a real heart, emoji don't look like real people or things). That only dead butterflies have their wings in the orientation most commonly represented is a fun piece of trivia, but IMO not worth caring about beyond that.

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Jensson 3y ago
Natural usually looks better than obviously fake, so it is worth pointing it out if you want quality. It is like how fake round drawn breasts doesn't look as good as more realistically drawn ones, but it is much easier to draw round balls than the more nicer real shapes. So for these butterfly images they would look a ton better just by not having perfectly angled T-pose wings. Just varying that a bit and never having perfect angles would get you almost the same pictures but looking much more natural.
bawolff 3y ago
I feel like the objectionable part is not that its unrealistic, its that its dead, which is kind of morbid. > the heart symbol doesn't look like a real heart, As a fun trivia fact, it might not look like the organ but it does look like an acient form of contraception (Silphium) which seems more symbolically correct anyways.
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Kaijo 3y ago
It isn't just a question of their visual representation in culture. Many major taxonomic works on Lepidoptera only provide illustrations of species in the pinned-out format. This is even more of an issue with moths than butterflies as moths show such a huge diversity of distinctive postures and wing configurations -- tucked up and folded away and overlapped in all kinds of unlikely and bizarre morphologies. I can think of so many weird examples, but to take one, check out this lasiocampid moth I found in Borneo some years back: https://i.imgur.com/auo2t9l.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/auo2t9l.jpeg If you manage to find that species in the standard work to consult, the eighteen-volume Moths of Borneo[1], you'll only see images of a pinned-out specimen, which makes it look like all the others. The motivation for this was to provide a standardized format for the formal visual depiction moth and butterfly anatomy, principally for taxonomists who will be working with dead specimens, and where the actual delimitation and description of taxa is done mostly using microscopic characters. But how moths hold their wings gives very valuable diagnostic information for both field ID and broader questions of classification, that would be very useful to see in a standard reference. This is increasingly recognized and I know of several recent large monographs and ongoing surveys that emphasize including photographs or illustrations of the in situ appearance. [1] https://www.mothsofborneo.com/ https://www.mothsofborneo.com/

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Jensson 3y ago

Natural usually looks better than obviously fake, so it is worth pointing it out if you want quality. It is like how fake round drawn breasts doesn't look as good as more realistically drawn ones, but it is much easier to draw round balls than the more nicer real shapes. So for these butterfly images they would look a ton better just by not having perfectly angled T-pose wings. Just varying that a bit and never having perfect angles would get you almost the same pictures but looking much more natural.

bawolff 3y ago

I feel like the objectionable part is not that its unrealistic, its that its dead, which is kind of morbid. > the heart symbol doesn't look like a real heart, As a fun trivia fact, it might not look like the organ but it does look like an acient form of contraception (Silphium) which seems more symbolically correct anyways.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Kaijo 3y ago

It isn't just a question of their visual representation in culture. Many major taxonomic works on Lepidoptera only provide illustrations of species in the pinned-out format. This is even more of an issue with moths than butterflies as moths show such a huge diversity of distinctive postures and wing configurations -- tucked up and folded away and overlapped in all kinds of unlikely and bizarre morphologies. I can think of so many weird examples, but to take one, check out this lasiocampid moth I found in Borneo some years back: https://i.imgur.com/auo2t9l.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/auo2t9l.jpeg If you manage to find that species in the standard work to consult, the eighteen-volume Moths of Borneo[1], you'll only see images of a pinned-out specimen, which makes it look like all the others. The motivation for this was to provide a standardized format for the formal visual depiction moth and butterfly anatomy, principally for taxonomists who will be working with dead specimens, and where the actual delimitation and description of taxa is done mostly using microscopic characters. But how moths hold their wings gives very valuable diagnostic information for both field ID and broader questions of classification, that would be very useful to see in a standard reference. This is increasingly recognized and I know of several recent large monographs and ongoing surveys that emphasize including photographs or illustrations of the in situ appearance. [1] https://www.mothsofborneo.com/ https://www.mothsofborneo.com/