Here I post the nicest looking artistic rendering
of this fabulous moth (that I know of). Some of
you may be familiar with the book it comes from.

Good artwork is hard to find these days...

Hello again,

From the 1982 book "The Guinness Book of Animal Facts & Feats", pg. 182. Quote...
"Chevalier Charles Oberthur, the French millionaire collector, once purchased a T. agrippina which measured an astonishing 360mm 14.17 in. across the wings, but the present whereabouts of this monster is not known. The Oberthur Collection of 1,140,000 butterflies & moths was sold in 1927 and 70 per cent of the specimens were acquired by the British Museum, but the superlative moth was not among them." Two other large specimens also mentioned in this book measured 304mm 11.97 (British Museum) & 281mm 11.06 in. (Dorman MUseum).

By the way, are there any biographical books on C.C. Oberthur? in English? I would love to find out more about him as he seems to have been in the same collecting league as W. Rothschild...

The above mentioned book is a really fascinating (& truly mind numbing collection!) of world record sized animals... each with it's own chapter: Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, Fishes, Echinodermata, Crustaceans, Arachnids, Insects (pgs 170-182), Centipedes & Millipedes, Segmented Worms, Molluscs, Cnidarians, & finally Prehistoric Animals. The book has a definite slant to British museum(s) records as expected. This book was published back in 1982 (252 pgs. total) & may be a bit dated, but is still, IMHO, one of the most interesting books I own. I haven't checked online, but it still may be available.

John K.

Indeed Dave, our hobby has certainly evolved in a pricey direction.

You know if one could just stick to collecting only what you can personally find this passion wouldn't seem so expensive; excepting of course the cost of proper storage (drawers, tight fitting field boxes etc.)

However, once you have been bitten by the "exotic insect habit" it's hard to go back and be resolute in only what "you can capture".

Field trips abroad are now far too costly and complicated for most of us to endeavor in. Yet, one can still find nice exotic things at fairs, dealers, and at old collections being parted out --- so, all is not lost and one can still enjoy acquiring exotic things from far away lands we will likely never visit....

Trehopr1 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 6:18 pm A very nice comparison photo of the two dave.
I was very fortunate to land a pair of C. hercules back in the early 1990s. Since that time I have never again seen the species offered here.

The female that I have (spread like yours) has a wing expanse of 216 mm. That is a far shy (short) of the 290 mm reported by the Queensland museum. Could you measure yours (tip to tip) and tell me where you're at in terms of millimeters ?

I think mine is a pretty decent sized female....

Will measure my female tomorrow in daylight & let you know. Did not have time to visit the Queensland museum in Brisbane while I was there sadly.

A very nice comparison photo of the two dave.
I was very fortunate to land a pair of C. hercules back in the early 1990s. Since that time I have never again seen the species offered here.

The female that I have (spread like yours) has a wing expanse of 216 mm. That is a far shy (short) of the 290 mm reported by the Queensland museum. Could you measure yours (tip to tip) and tell me where you're at in terms of millimeters ?

I think mine is a pretty decent sized female....

Trehopr1 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 5:52 pm Very nice Dave !
The larger of the two is very impressive.
I've not yet been able to land a good example. Over here, if people have them they may only have 1or 2 so, they generally won't part with them.

I'm bound to get a good one but, I'm certain I'll have to pay substantially more now that the prices on these and everything else has bumped up.

Thanks trehopr.
I know exactly what you mean. I paid five British Pounds each for these. They go for a lot more now.
I hope you manage to get one & it doesn't break the bank. Ours is by far from a cheap hobby these days.

Very nice Dave !
The larger of the two is very impressive.
I've not yet been able to land a good example. Over here, if people have them they may only have 1or 2 so, they generally won't part with them.

I'm bound to get a good one but, I'm certain I'll have to pay substantially more now that the prices on these and everything else has bumped up.

Here are my only two specimens of T agrippina
Both males (I presume) from Brazil 1985.
Shame about the broken antennae. They were in this condition when I got them.

Here are my largest C hercules & T agrippina together for comparison. Both specimens from the mid 1980s
PNG & Brazil respectively.

Euthalia anosa balina
A female & two males from Bali Indonesia

I've done it, I can't recall why, but the pin probably needs removed, and for that, I had to soften the area around the pin and use pliers to hold the pin,
and tweezers to push the body off, It worked 99% of the time without a problem.

Nice looking example. Looking more closely at your photograph it looks to be about 245mm. Your right forewing doesn't exactly line up underneath the zero (0).

This is a phenomenal species of moth which is probably most notable for its sheer wing expanse. Males typically fall (within the size range) of somewhere between 8 (1/2) and 10 inches wingspan when the trailing edge of the forewings are perpendicular to the body.

Females (start) at about the 10-in wingspan on up to 11 1/2 +. Their bodies tend to be heftier in build and because they carry the eggs their wingspan is naturally bigger for more lift.

The species seems to be fairly available. Specimens with an honest wingspan of 10 inches or more can get (very pricey) because of course, everyone wants the biggest example they can find. I have seen at least a dozen present in private collections here in the US but, most were (males).

The largest example that I have ever seen (personally) was a very impressive female measuring just over 11 (1/4) inches in the collection of Hermann Strecker.

If anyone does own a larger example than the specimen measured by Guinness; then I doubt that they would advertise it.

Some people are very reserved about the things that they own and simply don't feel the need to advertise (or bring attention to themselves) over any outstanding things they have acquired.

When putting a pinned lep into a riker mount are there any tips or suggestions that I should be aware of? Any help will be greatly appreciated...thanks.

I wonder if anyone has a larger one?
I bought this one once in the 70's at an insect fair for relatively little money. I think the butterfly is not rare.
https://e1.pcloud.link/publink/show?cod ... EDbB711axX

Joachim

kevinkk wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 4:39 pm ..., seemed a little obsessive, ... collector had what must have been
thousands of Colias, ...

I'm struggling to think of something significant that was accomplished by anyone who was NOT obsessive.

As for a series of thousands...

The North American Lycaenid guys did some genetic analysis, and turned the field guides upside down. Now they're scrambling to find fairly common blues from fairly common locations; nobody had bothered to collect them because they were, for a century, just common blues.

I've caught, and raised, thousands of Callosamia promethea. So many would come to the lights that I'd take them around the dark side of the house and toss them into the forest, hoping they'd go away. I retained only a few that stood out as brilliant or different. Then one day I pulled out my Callosamia drawer- which held only a half dozen pair- and stopped: THAT is not promethea, that's angulifera. And I looked at the others- that wasn't the only angulifera specimen! So a month ago this came back to me, along with the fact that Saturnids have disappeared, so I dug out my papered specimens and sure enough, those I had from 1980s are ALL promethea. Unfortunately in a way, the papered specimens I pulled out were those that had been forgotten when I'd given away thousands of specimens to Cornell only three months ago. And in what I donated, I know for a fact that there were promethea...but I don't know if there were angulifera. Besides which I also have specimens I can't tell if they are promethea or angulifera, and all date within the past decade or so; the older ones are all promethea. So now I have to wait for Cornell grad students to set all those to figure out what the heck happened to promethea & angulifera in my area.

My research on Tiger Swallowtails in NY has well demonstrated the need for series. In examining three private collections from 1970s-1980s with 14,000 and 6,000 and 3,000 specimens respectively, each collection held but a dozen Tiger Swallowtails. Why? Because they were just Papilio glaucus, they were common. And not just private collections- institutional collections suffer the same hole. And the geneticists also were missing test specimens from NY/ PA/ CT, but had plenty from VA and MI. That's now taken care of.

My field work in 2022 yielded 84 local specimens. Half were frozen and went to the geneticists. The other half were set for morphological analysis. And what that revealed caused me to take my 2021 unpublished paper and throw it away. A series demonstrates consistency, but also outliers; add in the specimens I got in KY and PA and it becomes clear that oft-published morphological identifiers are not at all reliable.

So yes, there are a number of reasons to have a series. I never bought into keeping series, but I am a firm believer now.

A long read Eurytides- interesting article. Clearly virtually every collector knows National Parks are off limits, as are state parks.
Interesting individuals as well, seemed a little obsessive, I recall seeing a program where a collector had what must have been
thousands of Colias, a single species, just case after case and on, of course, that was done legally, the point of interest was the
amount of animals . Seemed a bit pointless to me, having thousands of the same butterfly, and that's all he collected, there was
nothing else, at least they didn't show so on the interview.

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-a ... s-passion/

You are thinking of Mr. R. Skalski.

Papilio_indra wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 1:35 am P. indra kaibabensis is protected within the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park, along with all of the other species of Lepidoptera within the park. I believe that outside of the park it is not protected.

That's my understanding of the situation as well. I seem to recall reading a news story some years ago about someone being prosecuted for selling P. indra kaibabensis specimens, but don't know if it was ever proven that they were actually collected in GCNP. It seems that the logic was that, because the majority of this subspecies' range is apparently within the park's boundaries, the authorities assumed that the specimens were collected there. Obviously though, this wouldn't necessarily have been the case, as undoubtedly, this ssp. ranges outside the park's borders to some extent. Also - surely someone has captive-bred kaibabensis by now? If anyone can elaborate on the above comments, I'd be interested to hear. I'm not very knowledgeable about kaibabensis, or any of the other ssp. of indra, for that matter.

As far as butterflies flying over water, I've never forgotten the monarch I saw out whale watching in Monterey, the butterfly was flying low, hit the water, and I figured- that butterfly is finished- but it pulled itself out of the water and continued on...west