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A butterfly can fly with a broken wing. I was reading about QR codes and noticed that they can also suffer similar tears, resulting in data loss but still be interpretable. They also remind me in the vague sense of an abstract butterfly (the positional markers in the corners remind me of the eyes seen in some species)
Repairing Wings
The wikihow for repairing butterfly wings states “one way to do a simple repair is to cut the butterfly’s wings to make them even”
The butterfly is not hurt when you cut the wing. It’s like getting a haircut.
If this is to be believed, this is an interesting type of repair, where the damage is mirrored to repair.
It seems opinions vary depending on severity with some saying “allow nature to take its course” and others will DIY repair the wing.
According to McCloskey, helping the butterfly to fly had an even deeper sentimental meaning to her.
“Before my mother died, almost 20 years ago, she said to me, ‘Romy, whenever you see a butterfly, know that I’m there with you, and that I love you,’” “It was this late summer when I found a few caterpillars on a bush I had in the garden, I took them in and cared for them. When it was time to let them free, I could certainly feel my mom with me.”
https://newportbay.org/wildlife/insects/butterfly-wings/ https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/change/geneticsofbutterflycolors/
Static
Butterflies accumulate static electricity to attract pollen without contact.
Butterflies and moths collect so much static electricity whilst in flight, that pollen grains from flowers can be pulled by static electricity across air gaps of several millimetres or centimetres.
Falter
In When Einstein Walked With Gödel by Tim Holt I was reading that Godel met his wife Adele, in a nightclub called Der Nachtfalter (the moth). I don’t speak German but could see at sight Nacht which I understood and wanted to understand -falter.
“Tagfalter” is name for butterfly, which can mean “day-hinge” or “day-folder,” and “Nachtfalter” is a moth. These make semantic sense, or the “falter” part may instead reflect the Old High German “fifaltra” derived from the Latin.
Myth
Ancestral Butterfly:
According to Mircea Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion, “In Madagascar and among the Naga of Manipur, some trace their ancestry from a butterfly. According to the Pima of North America, at the time of beginning the creator, Chiowotmahki, assumed the form of a butterfly and flew over the world until he found a suitable place for mankind. The Maori of New Zealand believe that the soul returns to earth after death as a butterfly, and in the Solomon Islands a dying person, who has a choice as to what he will become after death, often chooses to become a butterfly. In Islamic Sufism, the moth that immolates itself in the candle flame is the soul losing itself in the divine fire.”
Mayan:
Harking back to the ancient Greek Psyche as butterfly, there is an interesting coincidence in Aztec and Mayan mythology. Itzpapalotl is the goddess of the Obsidian Butterfly, which is to say, of the soul embedded in stone. The seemingly antinomian idea is that the free butterfly/soul is released from the body by the sacrificial blade of obsidian, and simultaneously captured or contained in it. Itzpapalotl is a counterpart of the god Tezcatlipoca of the Smoking Mirror; “tezcat” means “obsidian knife“. The butterfly is also an attribute of Xochipilli, the god of flowers and vegetation, and is also associated with flickering firelight. (I suppose these names are Nahuatl.)