#battus

Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor, family Papilionidae, Ohio, USA

In Greek mythology, Battus is a shepherd who witnessed Hermes stealing Apollo's cattle. Because he broke his promise not to reveal this theft, Hermes turned him to stone. Because whenever a mortal gets involved in the gods’ bullshit, it’s never the gods that actually suffer.

A Swallowtail from from the Neotropics, occurring in the Atlantic Forest and Pampa biomes, where the caterpillars eat three species in the highly poisonous Dutchman’s Pipes genus Aristolochia. Somehow they’re unaffected by the fact that aristocholic acid is carcinogenic, mutagenic, and nephrotoxic - indeed, it likely the toxin makes other animals reluctant to snack on them.

Battus philenor - Pipevine swallowtail

Fantroll doodle dump

Pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor), Newark DE. Caterpillars from July 2017. Adults emerged August 1.  A distinctive caterpillar, pipevine swallowtails possess a pair of large, tentacle-like structures on their thorax. As the swallowtail has a tropical ancestry, it is believed that these caterpillars mimic the velvet worms of the amazon. The caterpillars are also considered to be toxic to predators, as they consume and store toxic chemicals from their primary host plant, the pipevine (Arisolochia spp.).