The attitude of ordinary people to entomologists

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26.11.2010 15:17, rpanin

You can and should be proud of any achievements, including in entomology. And being proud of being an entomologist is a rather dubious slogan, given the real attitude towards us in our country. We're all a little crazy, and that's something to live up to .

Well, you don't have to take everything so literally.
Be proud - it's still not complex.True, these two feelings are wonderfully intertwined among us entomologists, depending on the situation.
You think I really don't give a damn when you have fifty people watching you. I just want to say that "intelligence" is not a reason not to do anything when a rare butterfly or beetle flies near you and there are a lot of people around.

This post was edited by rpanin - 26.11.2010 15: 29

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26.11.2010 17:44, Sergey Didenko

Well, you don't have to take everything so literally.
You think I really don't give a damn when you have fifty people watching you. I just want to say that "intelligence" is not a reason not to do anything when a rare butterfly or beetle flies near you and there are a lot of people around.

I know a person who really "doesn't care" when a lot of people are looking at him - Vlad (Kotbegemot). I got used in my England that there is a completely different attitude to a person with a net and let's wave right and left at my dacha. Although my environment there is a solid professorship from all sides, but techies. And when I'm alone, I try not to show my passion too much, even though everyone knows it. But being together with him, you are inevitably charged with his excitement (herd feeling is in our blood) and stop paying attention to others.

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26.11.2010 20:06, Hierophis

The attitude of the society towards the students of literature is, of course, mostly neutral. But if you "Freak out" on this topic, the whole city instantly (behind your back) knows about it. I see several reasons.
First(optional)- this is one of the ways of social protection of the average person. I.e. "thank God I'm not like that or my man is normal, only drinks vodka". And in fact, it makes life easier for many people. They understand that they are on the right path up the social ladder. Especially happy "men" suffering from the syndrome of "big eggs "(brutality). They also have to prove all their lives that it is necessary to sit with their legs spread wide, if it doesn't work out, vodka saves them. I don't want to offend my colleagues, but on the forum a lot of entomologists suffer from "brutality".
Second, the country is still "poorly literate". This is the legacy of tsarism. The Soviet government did little to change the mentality of the peasant. WE ALL COME FROM THE COUNTRYSIDE. Noble education gave the concept of entomology as an integral part of world science. Where is the nobility now, at least the intelligentsia...
Definitely, we punished our children by dealing with beetles. We're lucky beetles in our own way. Our children will be poked in the eyes – your father is a jerk. How can you protect them from the average person?
I've done something wrong!

You can argue about neutrality! the attitude is not neutral, just not in society, society is an abstract concept, but the attitude of specific people. So, it is not neutral at all - neutral is when it is indifferent.
Here is a man walking along the sidewalk and smoking. And everyone is neutral about this, because it is a common phenomenon, although not everyone smokes, but there are quite a few smokers, and it is also a "tradition". But if a man openly pricks with a syringe, it will immediately arouse curiosity, and depending on the assumptions - a certain opinion, or radically aggressive - "dirty narik", or pitiful - "diabetic", but in any case, the event with the syringe will cause a certain reaction in the thoughts of most, and someone can even in the hearing that he will say.
A man with a syringe in general, and even more so in public - this is an anomaly, everyone knows about drug addicts, but there are not so many drug addicts, and you can not often see such a picture in public. And by the way, the paradox is that even though smoking is also a nasty thing, and it costs money and harms your health, but nevertheless the attitude is neutral.

The same is true when you see an adult man, a teenager wielding a net-almost everyone knows that there are those who "collect beetles", almost the whole thing is usually described positively in words - "there are such enthusiastic cranks who study beetles", in children this business is sometimes encouraged, and teenagers also say, "he catches butterflies, it's good, even if he's not a drug addict," he'll grow up, get married, and this nonsense will fade later( and by the way, they are often right, especially about "later").
But an adult will still be squinted at, and discussed behind their backs, because in post-Soviet countries life is hard, what only costs to get your bread and multiply, after that there is only time for" nature " for kebabs(or butterflies to catch once a weekend or even a year

), and then, All right. And here - the" type " of beetles carelessly (as it seems to them) catches all summer!

The second feature is a very developed primitive (based on habitual features) rank system in post-Soviet countries, where the syndrome of "big eggs" is in price, and all sorts of beetles are by default good material for rank statements, both "mental", such as "I'm a moron, it's good that I'm not like that" and active"break the nets, that sort of thing. And being a bug hunter for a high-ranking one is also difficult, even if it is hunting.
The value of a primitive rank system in the conditions of hard life is quite normal, the closer a "society" is to primitive conditions with difficulties in getting food, protecting animals and families, the" big eggs "and" equality in mass " are more valuable (potentially a victim of a predator(or "a person with very large eggs") becomes the one who stands out from the herd), and the stronger the position of rank and the stronger the suppression of anomalies in the mass(read - herd).

So here I think not everything is so simple-they say, everyone is from the village and not literate, there is something more extensive here

By the way, here are a couple of links to the video, so to speak, relation to:.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyAGYhhBQM

watch from 7.22

Well, propaganda to suppress anomalies(including prolonged childhood) and propaganda of "sameness"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oIW8Zo3h2U

By the way, there are still anomalies that ask to be "suppressed".

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27.11.2010 1:34, Hierophis

Hierophis, have you seen Ruslana (rpanin)? He'll break a lot of things himself.

Is that a good thing? Or bad? (c)

By the way, if it comes to that, then a professional entomologist, seasoned in experiments, habitus should not be weak in the optimum.
But something seems to me that this will have little effect on the misinterpretations regarding catching butterflies on people, and secondly, the complexion still does not say anything about rank, according to sociobiological criteria, everything is taken into account, from the complexion, "face mask" to a certain behavior and style. If a person is in uniform, it still does not say anything about his high rank, and low spiritual status, although sometimes it hints.

27.11.2010 2:11, rpanin

Is that a good thing? Or bad? (c)
By the way, if it comes to that, then a professional entomologist, seasoned in experiments, habitus should not be weak in the optimum.
But something seems to me that this will have little effect on the misinterpretations regarding catching butterflies on people, and secondly, the complexion still does not say anything about rank, according to sociobiological criteria, everything is taken into account, from the complexion, "face mask" to a certain behavior and style. If a person is in uniform, it still does not say anything about his high rank, and low spiritual status, although sometimes it hints.

Br-r-r, I don't quite understand here.Based on your words "about his high rank = low spiritual status"?

Shanovny, you are ill with an etiology , I have been ill with it for a long time.Do not continue to flood on this topic. Get into practical entomology, rather than whining and talking nonsense.

Damn it,the young philosopher was provoked.
I've sworn a hundred times not to get involved in abstract arguments.

This post was edited by rpanin - 27.11.2010 04: 13

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27.11.2010 10:44, Hierophis

Br-r-r, I don't quite understand here.Based on your words "about his high rank = low spiritual status"?

Shanovny, you are ill with an etiology , I have been ill with it for a long time.Do not continue to flood on this topic. Get into practical entomology, rather than whining and talking nonsense.

Damn it,the young philosopher was provoked.
I've sworn a hundred times not to get involved in abstract arguments.

Only not etiology and ethology probably. Ethology, by the way, in the classical sense is the science of animal behavior. For a person, there is psychology. I don't really like the parallelism between animal ethology and human psychology myself, but there's definitely something to it.
The phrase about the spiritual / rank status otavlyu without comments, so as not to flood at all

As for complaints, if it's not interesting/boring/meaningless, then a person should just ignore such a topic. And so, it remains to assume that your grumbling :

27.11.2010 14:54, botanque

My father still believes that collecting insects is a millionaire's privilege. And seeing on the TV screen how some "bespectacled nerd" observes the behavior of a snail, he snorts: "... they also get paid for this." At the same time, sometimes the first one finds interesting animals and draws my attention to them, or catches them himself.

A friend's father is a fanatical hunter. He can spend hours recounting how he watched the soul drain from a dead goat. I once answered his question: "What are you doing now?" with a smile, in anticipation of ridicule, I answered: "I study all my beetles." He, without a drop of irony: "and what's so important in this, everyone has their own, the main thing is that the lesson is to their liking."

Once with another friend, after a successful Kolyma, we looked into the elevator operator at the place of his former work. The three of us are sitting with the elevator operator, drinking beer. Beautiful sunny day. Bugs fly in through the window and onto the table. I shake them off. Well, Seryoga started telling me about me, how I used to climb bushes on hikes, how I was bitten by various creatures, etc. The elevator operator, a woman about 15 years older than us, answers: "but the person has an INTEREST." And rhetorically to a friend: "do you have an interest?.."

P.S. I apologize for the abundance of punctuation marks.

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17.02.2011 19:55, Yakovlev

a huge number of my friends, the natives of remote areas of Altai, look at my work as the strangest whim. We are strong friends with many of them, we often meet in summer and winter, and we help each other. I am a normal person to everyone, and I will help if necessary, and I am not a fool to drink, only one thing overshadows... butterflies. My late and wonderful friend Vladimir Pavlovich Kavriga, an amazing Cossack of good taste and the only Slav in Jazator (the most remote village in Altai), often made fun of me. And sometimes he was the victim of jokes.

Once he said (after my 4th arrival):
"You know, Roma, you still drove me crazy.
- How so, Palych..??? - I tried to clarify, because driving a certified psychiatrist crazy is really bad...
- I began to pay attention to butterflies. I go, I look flies, with .. ka. I stare at her, and the men laugh.

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17.02.2011 21:38, Yakovlev

Folk taxonomy is my specialty. I want to write an article about it sometime, because this is the most interesting subject.
Again about the late Kavrig Vladimir Pavlovich. Here is an excerpt from my story about him.

Kavriga continued.
- I remember in the Krasnoyarsk Territory another interesting bird was brought by hunters. Probably even Andrey wouldn't have figured it out. It's so healthy. Gray. Big eyes. With ears, it looks like an owl, but very big. Probably an unknown species to science. No one has figured it out, even to the old people were worn.
"How big was it?"
Kavriga spread his arms out to a distance corresponding to the average size of the owl.
"So this is the owl!
- What kind of owl do you like?! What an owl he is, " Palych pointed to the liter jar: And that one was about sixty centimeters long!
We realized that there was no need to argue, and only after some time did we find out the reason for not knowing Kavriga. It turned out that his ideas about the taxonomy of birds of prey were, to put it mildly, peculiar, or, more precisely, original. We often asked Kavriga about the various birds that inhabited the local expanses. He liked to tell us about the mass of owls lurking around every corner. Just before we left, we asked how such ordinary creatures, according to him, escaped our inquisitive eyes.
"Why, boys, even the village is full of them.
Fortunately, the conversation took place in the village and we, stung by our own zoological (in this case, ornithological) blindness, called on Kavriga to point out owls to us. Without further delay, we went out into the courtyard – Kavriga raised his finger to the telegraph pole and aimed it at the bored kite there and said:
"Well, there's the owl!
So we became clear about the stories of" white owls " - harriers, about the mass of owls in the vicinity of Jazator.
Thus, Palych generously divided the entire diverse campaign of birds of prey into three genera: owls (read kites, falcons, eagles and spotted eagles), owls (actually owls) and a species hitherto unknown to modern taxonomists (owl Bubo bubo).

This post was edited by Yakovlev - 02/18/2011 06: 43

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19.03.2011 14:41, yurich

Do not judge strictly, if not in the subject (rather in the topic "The attitude of entomologists to ordinary people").
- Now I'm watching zomboyashchik on the first. They say that a poor woman was hospitalized after eating canned Sprat in tomato sauce, without ever noticing a "Cockroach" in it...
Further, in the same program, this "monster" was called "insect", "beetle","worm"...
They turned to biologists for help, who identified the "creature" as a relict bottom crustacean from the order of equal-legged crustaceans... - and it was poisoned, - as the announcer "exhaustively" said - from the fact that the fish was rotten!

I remember the phrase of M. Zadornov: "Well, stupid".
I have seen how adults who studied biology at school, shy away from flying past perelivnitsy or ribbon, and suddenly bite

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21.04.2011 22:06, AGG

not far from my house (private sector, where there were a lot of different animals), a lilac hawk moth settled at one of the lanterns. my father and I watched it for several nights, but it was very high and did not want to go down. well, if the mountain does not go, then you have to go to it or come up

with something my father had 9 knees of a duralumin mast from some antennas, connected by 3 pcs, so each part was 1.5 m. in full assembly, it turned out 1,5 * 3 + 1,5 the wooden handle of the net itself, which was stuck into the tube - in short, a lamppost (wooden) could be covered from above. at the same time, the design was easy to handle even for me (12-13 years old).
and now, that joyful hour has come! we still caught him!!! but the joy of the catch quickly drowned in a fit of our wild neighing (you can't call it anything else). the fact is that an old lady in a nightgown flew out of the house next to the lantern and started yelling at the whole street: "Poachers!!!!!!! poachers!!!!!!! all the birds were caught!!!!!!!!!!!!
police!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

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25.04.2011 19:01, Proctos

Where does this quote come from?

http://www.archive.org/download/entomologi...c911979tutt.pdf

On being "Stared and Grinned at by the Vulgar"
By Dr. Ronald S. Wilkinson

"Is there such a person as a timid field entomologist? I
think so, for most of us will admit that at times, when pursuing
our quarry with net or camera, we have encountered situations
in which we have been "stared and grinned at by the
vulgar". I choose these words carefully, for they are from
an actual quotation of 1826, and despite the considerably
amended modern usage of the word 'vulgar' from its original
and more innocent meaning, William Spence's phrase must
stir at least some memories. Who among us has not felt, at
least momentarily, in the field that discretion might be the
better part of valour? Of course, we have all overcome such
thoughts . . .
Well, perhaps not. From the very beginning of entomological
investigation, we have had to face those who have
believed that a student of insects must be eccentric, or worse.
In fact, if we read the laments of some of our predecessors,
we must think that once almost all of the world was 'the
player on the other side', and the current cartoon stereotype
of the entomologist as a rotund man in khaki shorts and pith
helmet pursuing a gaudy lepidopteron at full tilt has had
frequent precedents in history.
From many possible choices, a few examples will suffice.
Jezreel Jones, when collecting at Cadiz for one of the founders
of scientific entomology, James Petiver, wrote to his mentor
in 1701 that he had been "suspected for one that studys witchcraft,
necromancy and a madman" (Sloane MS. 4063, f. 76r).
Among early entomologists Jones was hardly alone, and
counter-measures had to be devised. Early clap-nets (Wilkinson,
1978) were jointed so that they could be taken apart and
carried in a small compass, not only for convenience but for
the purpose of concealment; eventually they could fit within
the ample greatcoats of the time. In 1826 Kirby and Spence
warned fellow entomologists in the very popular Introduction
to Entomology that "with all your implements about you, you
will perhaps at first be stared and grinned at by the vulgar . . .
Things that are unusual are too often termed ridiculous; and
the philosopher ... is too often regarded by the ignorant
plebeian as little short of a madman".
Kirby and Spence's arguments to the philosophical temperament
must have been cold comfort to many entomologists,
who continued to resort to ruses of concealment. For example,
the internal cavity of the hat had been used as a pinning
surface while collecting insects in the field since Petiver's
time (Sloane MS. 3332, f, 2r-v), and that method was still
recommended in the nineteenth century. Kirby and Spence
suggested it, and it was certainly preferable to the practice of
pinning insects to the outside of the hat, used by William
Swainson, who was following in the tradition of Linnaeus'
pupil Andre Sparrmann. But Sparrmann's collections were
made at the Cape, and Swainson's triumphs were accomphshed
far from the inquiring eyes of his fellow Englishmen. Indeed,
despite the new wave of interest in natural history, when
writing of the climate of opinion in 1 835 Edward Newman had
to admit that "ninety-nine persons out of a hundred, even at
the present day, [think] that a person who could take an
interest in pursuing a butterfly is a madman. [Still that suggestion
of lunacy!] The collector of insects must, therefore,
make up his mind to sink in the opinion of his friends; to be
the object of the undisguised pity and ridicule of the mass
of mankind, from the moment in which he commences such
a pursuit" (Newman, 1835).
Social historians, take note, for from the viewpoint of
the historian of biology, this was the 'golden age' of British
entomology. Haworth and Donovan had ushered in a new
century of scientific endeavour; Stephens and Curtis had
been publishing their grand surveys in parts for some years;
the completion of Kirby and Spence's work, which had a
wide influence in promoting popular awareness of entomology,
was almost a decade in the past. Newman's highly literate
Entomological Magazine had been initiated in 1832 as the
voice of the Entomological Club, and the Entomological
Society, later to be chartered as the Royal Entomological
Society of London, had been founded in 1833. Yet, if we
can accept the words of those who lived through the time, on
the popular level entomologists were still considered to be
very strange persons, no matter how their numbers were
swelling in village and city. We cannot escape the fact that
entomologists were less tolerated by the populace than were
those participants in other aspects of the natural history
movement which swept Victorian Britain. While seeking his
lichen and fern, the botanist was relatively ignored; those who
with Charles Kingsley sought 'the wonders of the shore' were
comparatively unmolested; but entomologists were hooted by
small boys, as well as older gentlemen who ought to have
known better.
This attitude was softened somewhat as the century wore
on, but later Victorians continued to mention popular slight,
and the continued use of devices obviously designed for concealment
as well as utility demonstrates that abuse was taken
seriously. The clever umbrella net design appeared in various
forms in various countries, for British entomologists were
hardly alone in their problem. An umbrella net in its cover
could be carried on a public vehicle or along a public road
without notice, and in many cases actual umbrellas were used
for entomological purposes. The renowned American herpetologist
Raymond L. Ditmars, who was originally an entomological assistant to William Beutenmiiller at the American
Museum of Natural History, described a late Victorian gentleman
who utilized an umbrella and a most unobtrusive costume
for collecting (Ditmars, 1932): "I recognized Otto Dientz, a
prominent [New York] business man. He was attired in a
gray summer suit and looked as well tailored as if he had
stepped from a bandbox ... On all his trips he carried a tan
silk umbrella, slipped into a cover which made it look like a
cane. Arriving at the area of operation he would open his
umbrella, stroll leisurely along a wood road, and coming to
certain bushes invert the umbrella, and then tap the branches
with a stick". Deception had come a long way from the days
of Jezreel Jones.
Specialized entomological variations of the umbrella ranged
from a beating net in which the handle was jointed at a right
angle to the axis of the bumbershoot for convenience in collecting
(an excellent line engraving is reproduced by Banks, 1909,
p. 42) to the net with an umbrella handle which was frequently
sold well into this century. My collection of historical entomological
equipment includes several of these, equipped with a
jointed spring steel net ring which collapses flat against the
rod. Such nets could be used for sweeping, beating and aerial
work, and yet could be folded and wound into a form which
looked superficially like an umbrella. Many contemporary
entomologists recall using this sort of net, and the design may
still be in active service. The 'hidden net' has had several
other variations, and perhaps its most modern development
has been the pocket net. Ditmars (1932) recalled well-dressed
entomologists on an American field outing whisking nets from
their rear pockets to collect Microlepidoptera. That tradition
still survives, due to the small spring steel net sold by Watkins
and Doncaster, which can be coiled within the pocket and
carried for any emergency. (I have been thankful for mine
on many an occasion when a more conspicuous net would have
invited unwanted attention.)
Quite frankly, we all do not have the courage of such
heroes as the American lepidopterist and museum director
William J. Holland, who in his youth in North Carolina was
determined to capture a specimen of the magnificent sexually
dimorphic fritillary Speyeria diana (Cramer), to the remarkable
extent of pursuing it past the onlooking students of a
girls' school. He later recalled (Holland, 1898) that he "would
rather have faced a cannonade in those days than a bevy of
boarding-school misses, but there was no alternative". Greater
love hath no man! Holland displayed similar fortitude many
years later, when, as a well-known guest in an elegant hotel in
Rio, he was faced with another 'moment of truth': "At the
dinner table the attention of the throng of fashionably dressed
ladies and gentlemen was attracted to a large moth, brilliantly
colored, which came fluttering about the tables. I slipped into
the hall and seized my net, and as the gay insect came by,
with a quick stroke captured it; I was greeted with a salvo of
applause from the assembled guests" (Holland, 1913). But
what would the reaction have been had the moth evaded
Holland's net? No, few of us have such panache.
When recalling historical precedents to illustrate an argument,
we are all tempted to add improvements of our own. As
a hopeful young collector in the early and mid- 1940s, I was
forced to conceal my net and other regalia as well as I could
to escape the ridicule of the local boys and (I regret to say)
some of my less philosophical neighbours. Once in the field
I was in my glory until an 'intruder' entered the meadow or
forest path, whereupon I hid behind a tree until the unwelcome
interloper passed and I could return to the solitary
pleasure of the chase. College days brought no improvement;
how could I explain to a favoured girl that I had to leave her
suddenly to pursue a moth which had just fluttered by?
All that was many years ago, and one might think that
experience resulted in callousness. No. When I was teaching at
a large American university I found that one of the very best
situations for collecting moths was a local restaurant illuminated
by huge incandescant lamps, but unfortunately frequented
by as many students as Lepidoptera. The reaction to
my acrobatics there is best forgotten, as are the encounters
with police, farmers, inebriates, mere passers-by, and various
categories of others whose comments cannot really have been
much different from those which prompted Newman to write
his observations in 1835.
Human nature changes slowly, and entomologists must
relegate such reminiscences to sherry-parties and not allow
painful memories to dampen their enthusiasm. In fact, we can
sometimes recall the occasional opposite reaction to balance
the account. Several years ago a colleague called attention to
a large and conspicuous moth resting at a considerable height
near one of the lamps flanking the entrance to the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. Even at that distance I could
recognize the moth as Catocala marmorata Edw., one of the
rarest of its genus in the United States, only captured once
before (in the nineteenth century) in the District of Columbia,
and a moth which I had not taken in thirty years as a specialist
in the Catocala. Like Alfred Russel Wallace at Batchian, my
heart began to beat violently, and I quickly jogged to my
nearby home for net and bottle. Returning at the noon hour,
I found a scene more populous than Holland's girls' school
and Rio banquet combined. Scores of persons stood about the
entrance, but the unperturbed moth was still there. It was
resting in a position higher than my reach, so I requisitioned
the tallest person I could find. He willingly placed my net over
the moth and drew it down until I could bottle it. To my
great surprise there was applause from the audience. The
unexpected result reminded me of Holland, and I have since
been heartened by the reminiscence. However, I sometimes
wonder, as I have about Holland in Rio: what if I had missed
the moth? I don't wish to think about that . . ."

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