The attitude of ordinary people to entomologists

Please accept my sketch about the townsfolk.
In the spring, a friend and I visited him in the village and hung up the lamps. We sit waiting for the pavonia to light up. At some point, a local landmark appears - a village alkanaut with a bottle in his hand.
- Whose are we doing?
- Man, go where you were going.
- Zema, if not in the bastard, what are we doing? Will you have a drink?"
"Get out of here, we're catching butterflies, you're bothering us."
Oddly enough, the drunk quickly disappeared into the darkness. After 10 minutes, he reappears and drags another one on his back. He threw it under our feet, pushed it aside.
- Andryukha, tell them about the butterflies.
And the second drinker, to our surprise, began the story of how in 1978 he served as a border guard on Khanko Island, how he stood guard at night, and huge butterflies swirled around the lanterns, how he caught them and sent them to his girlfriend in Yaroslavl in mail envelopes. I was most struck by his remark: "I can still shoot these butterflies around the lanterns sometimes at night." The green snake killed this Andriukha, but when we arrived there again, the locals greeted us warmly.

The usefulness of a cow or sheep is a relative concept. In the case of over-grazing, both of them create horror. When we were in the Dzungarian Alatau, we often came across places where everything was knocked out and eaten out, only burning mountain nettles and cuffs grew from the vegetation. Entomofauna in such places was also depleted. For example, only the Siberian filly and the dark-winged grasshopper jumped out of the straight-winged ones. A dozen or more species were collected on untouched slopes.

it's not about that.. The main thing here is the human factor - not cows and sheep themselves go to the same place and eat everything, but shepherds bring a bunch of cattle to the same pasture, which eats everything.

Since they have already mentioned the service in the army, I will also tell you the story of my entomological youth. When I was drafted into the Soviet army, I was sent to Primorsky Krai to serve. As a biologist, I was very satisfied with this, although for some reason all my friends thought that I was a cool hit... Arriving at the unit, on the first day I encountered the fauna of the Far East in the person of Artemis sitting in the middle of the parade ground. After a couple of weeks of getting used to it, I started collecting insects... Among my comrades in the service and fathers-commanders, this caused surprise to say the least, but after a while they all apparently decided that I was certainly a psycho and a jerk, but I was not going to run away with my collections to China. In general, the company authorities tried not to notice that in my army nightstand, in addition to a toothbrush and a charter, several boxes with fees were registered. Everything was going fine, until the company had some kind of check in the person of a certain colonel. Our deputy political officer accompanied him. Of course, it was not without an inspection of the nightstands... It looked something like this: the colonel opens the nightstand and sees several boxes lying there, opens one of them, comes across bags of butterflies. This is followed by a dialogue: Polkonik: - What is this disgusting thing??? Zampolit: "And him.... And he... And he promised to arrange a red corner in the Lenin room!!! There is a pause, then the Colonel: Duck why is it in the nightstand, since the red corner-give him a nightstand or something separate... Of course, no one gave me a separate nightstand, but I took my fees home safely.... There was even a calypogon, but this is a completely different story...

it's not about that.. The main thing here is the human factor - not cows and sheep themselves go to the same place and eat everything, but shepherds bring a bunch of cattle to the same pasture, which eats everything.

Shepherds are the second thing that comes to mind. But the cows...
Situation: set 30 traps in subalpine meadows. 25 trampled and dug.
Of course, I expected that a certain percentage of traps would be ruined ,but so much!
Guess who I first matyukal ( And myself the same )

The human factor is certainly present, but as rpanin correctly noted, it is cows that come to mind first. There was a completely similar situation with soil traps in Southern Kazakhstan. Plus, these horned-bodied ones were constantly trying to scratch themselves on the cages where we kept locusts for experiments, and of course, they turned them over. From our mats to their address, probably the whole steppe rattled. In the end, the shepherds realized that they should not be driven here, but these animals themselves stubbornly perled to the cages. We had to strengthen the cages further, because of this, we lost a lot of time that could have been used for training camps.

This is not about cows, but about their numbers, especially in biotopes that are highly susceptible to soil erosion. But for the middle zone, moderate grazing is absolutely necessary so that meadow biotopes remain so, without turning into impenetrable thickets of willow, aspen and birch. I saw such a picture as recently as this spring in the north of our region, where almost all the villages have died out and there is no sign of cattle. How happy I was to get out of these areas, which were marked on the map as meadows...

This post was edited by Anthrenus - 05.09.2008 09: 55

A plump murlo in the uniform of an ensign sat in the waiting room

Ensigns are all like that and everywhere This is a separate type of troops

In my opinion, ensigns are not even a separate type of troops, but a separate species in general - Homo militaris praporicus .
Anthrenus, agrees that moderate grazing is necessary in some places. Earlier in Kazakhstan, when nomadic animal husbandry was developed there, livestock to some extent replaced the exterminated wild ungulates (saigas, gazelles, kulans) in the steppe ecosystem. Now, when most of the livestock has been slaughtered due to lack of pastures and the exodus of the rural population to the cities, the steppe is gradually degrading, desertification is taking place (this is only one of the reasons, of course). The people who remain in the villages are forced to graze their livestock in areas that are prone to erosion, since a lot of land suitable for pasture has fallen into private hands and is used for completely different purposes.

Let's go back from our sheep to our inhabitants. There's a barber shop in our office where I go to get my hair cut. We chat with the hairdresser about this and that, suddenly she stops cutting my hair, I hear a buzzing sound from the window. A solid bronze Potosia marginicollis plops on the windowsill (the window is wide open on the occasion of the summer heat), falls to the floor and begins to kick with its feet, unable to turn over. I thought Rita was going to squeal or ask me to catch an insect (she knows I'm an entomologist). Against all odds, she comes over, picks up the beetle very carefully, puts it in a jar, and says to me: "Every time they fly in like this, they fall and can't turn over. So sorry for them to become. I'm going to let you out now." I begged the beetle out of her, of course, and started asking her what she knew about them. Satisfy: "Yes, they eat roses in my front garden, but I still feel sorry for them-they are so beautiful. Always if I see that I flew in the window and fell like this or crawls along the road-I try to take it and let it out in the grass away":). It was not often that I had to deal with such an attitude of the average person towards insects.

This post was edited by Bukashechnik - 09.09.2008 07: 19

Last weekend, we were having a cup of tea with a former research and development employee (he also got out of there, like me, but a little later). He is very large in length and width (he had three drivers in the office - Bear, Brontosaurus and Papazoglo), but extremely good-natured, always ready to help with something. Moths were flying through the open window, and I caught them as I went and shoved them into the freezer. Slowly, it came to the second decanter, in the sense of a teapot, I caught another scoop and decided at the same time to push the already frozen animals along the layers, well, to get a snack. Then a catocala flies in, Yerlan decides to help me catch it, grabs it by the wing with the accuracy of a praying mantis and ... .. rips it off. At the sight of such vandalism, I start to roar like a hungry tyrannosaurus: "Erlanishche, damn, so that your TV only shows Katya Pushkareva, can't you be more careful?!! And finally, people say, if you don't want s...t, don't torment f...u!!!!". Yerlanishche looks at me with a terribly guilty look and says, " You know, I've always liked insects. Even when I lived in the village, I grazed cows and watched them, it was very interesting." "And why did you go to phytopathology then? "" Yes, because of the same cases. I wanted to take a topic on entomology at the Agricultural Institute, but the teacher dissuaded me, I always broke the material in practice, and scared off insects in the field" " Well, I didn't have to listen to her, I would have gotten better at it over time, I personally know a person who has 2 times your paws more, and genitals from the smallest beetles pulls easily." So I had to open the third kettle to calm him and myselfdown. Here, because of a misunderstanding, the teacher lost entomology to a great specialist in all respects. And then I somehow glued the catocala together

This post was edited by Bukashechnik - 19.09.2008 10: 41

met "fcontact" such a quote:
"The fact that for the caterpillar — the end of the world, for the butterfly - a birthday."
oh, how wrong people are.. consider caterpillars and butterflies to be different critters

met "fcontact" such a quote:
"The fact that for the caterpillar — the end of the world, for the butterfly - a birthday."
oh, how wrong people are.. they consider caterpillars and butterflies to be different creatures

They're right about something. Completely different sensors, different organs, a different way of perceiving the world. This is if you move away from pragmatism and scientific approach.

then we can say that after puberty a person dies and is born again

No, it's not. It is in bedbugs and cockroaches of all sorts that puberty occurs according to our general scheme, and here there is a complete restructuring of the body. I'm afraid Svansson is right about that.

Well, once such a binge.... I smiled at the aphorism I read yesterday: "The bug professes anthropocentrism."

consciousness is unchangeable.. In the former caterpillar, the perception of the world by new senses is simply lost.

- The most interesting comment in my opinion: - On the Odnoklassniki website, I ask Russian-speaking people I don't know who live in the southern hemisphere (where it's spring) to catch and send me beetles for money... - The answer is always only 3:
- We have no beetles.
"I'm very afraid of them.
- I feel sorry for them (you're a fiend).
-

I have repeatedly heard that there are no beetles abroad. Every time I tell my friends who go on a camping trip outside the cordon to catch beetles. Only a few people bring anything. Most claim that there were no insects there. People just don't see them!

I have repeatedly heard that there are no beetles abroad. Every time I tell my friends who go on a camping trip outside the cordon to catch beetles. Only a few people bring anything. Most claim that there were no insects there. People just don't see them!

Same bullshit. Either they claim that there were no beetles, or they bring one or two beetles. People basically have no idea what an amazing world is around them.

people don't see beetles and butterflies anywhere. when I show what is common in our country-the eyes take off their shoes, become very wide, form a perfect circle.. But blame them for this nizya

people don't see beetles and butterflies anywhere. when I show what is common in our country-the eyes take off their shoes, become very wide, form a perfect circle.. But I can't blame them for that

The same. After looking at several tens/hundreds of my photos, they say - " is this all we have here!?"
In the summer, I went to visit barry, shone in the village, on the site of his grandmother, seeing the animals on the screen, said - " And all this lives in my garden? Nightmare! "

And one friend of mine said that after what I saw in my home collection, I can't go to the garden with my foot now! I say-Well, I used to go and nothing. And she - I didn't know before that there could be SUCH a thing! So enlighten the people after that

And one friend of mine said that after what I saw in my home collection, I can't go to the garden with my foot now! I say-Well, I used to go and nothing. And she - I didn't know before that there could be SUCH a thing! So enlighten the people after that

Yes, the inhabitants of all insects (and not only them, but also other animals) are divided strictly into two categories: harmful (most) and useful (to which, according to their ideas, only honeybees belong). But it seems that we have already discussed this issue in this topic...

No, there are advanced inhabitants. Consider useful ladybirds, red forest ants, and some even know that ground beetles eat "harmful" insects. But this constant question "is this insect harmful or useful" is of course wildly tiring.

But this constant question "is this insect harmful or useful" is of course wildly tiring.

I usually reply that the most harmful creature on Earth is a human being. Some are offended...

- Today I call a friend in Kemerovo, who has collected 22 (!) different beetles for me since the end of September (I came to the conclusion that the" number " of coleoptera living in a particular area on the fifth depends on the attitude to the petitioner), "and she tells me, almost crying, that she put them out of the freezer and put them in a candy box; - and the 2-year-old daughter, who came to visit her friend, found this box and ate all the beetles!!!

This fact completely changed the girl's life, she became a luminary of entomology, and just think what she will write in the section "how I became interested in insects" in 20 years.

This post was edited by El Cazador - 10/28/2008 17: 04

When I was studying at uni, we had one teacher, Michal Petrovich Shilov, not the point. On the outskirts of the city we have a durka (a place called Bogorodskoe). So M. P. started looking for mushrooms there. He climbs a tree and picks with a knife. And then just two orderlies from durka got better somewhere. They stand from below and look and ask: Man, what are you doing on a tree? And M. P., without a second thought, I collect mushrooms. Locked it up.

- Well, today is generally out of the ordinary! - I go in the evening, I look at the bee sitting without a leg, and at night it was already the first frost. "I took it, breathed it," she stirred a little. And next to the Institute of "Economics and Management", - cynias are blooming., - Let me think, - I'll put it on a flower, - this baby when the sun warms her up-will have breakfast and fly to the hive... - Here comes an uncle and aunt, - And I " Oh, you flowerbed e..... y! - I now your mouth in..... u and w...u! - And the woman shouts, - catch it Vasya! - right now we'll hand it over to the police, - let it be there on.......yat! " - and I was walking from the theater, inspired and enlightened (my lady went to the stall for cigarettes) in a suit, a white shirt with hair below the shoulders... - In short, - people did not UNDERSTAND ME

You can't say better than Nabokov about the attitude of ordinary people to the entomologist:
***
In the Crimea of 1918, on a path over the Black Sea, among wax-blooming bushes, a rickety Bolshevik sentry wanted to arrest me for signaling (with a net, he said) to British warships. In the summer of 1929, when I was collecting butterflies in the Eastern Pyrenees, I never looked back as I walked through a village with a net and did not see the villagers standing in the same positions as I found them, as if I were Sodom and they were Lot's wives. Ten years later, in the Alpes-Maritimes, I once noticed the grass swaying softly and snakelike behind me, because a fat field gendarme was crawling on his stomach to find out if I was catching songbirds. America showed perhaps even more morbid interest in my retiarian pursuits — perhaps because I was in my late forties when I moved in, and the older a person is, the odder they look with a fishing net in their hands. Sullen farmers pointed out the no fishing sign to me; cars roared derisively as they sped along the highway; sleepy dogs, oblivious to the fetid tramp, snarled and snarled at me; little babies pointed me out to their puzzled mothers; broad-minded tourists wanted to know if I was catching beetles and one morning, in the desert near Santa Fe, among the tall yucca trees in full bloom, a huge black mare followed me for more than a mile.

Entomologists are not the only ones who have difficulties communicating with ordinary people

One guy gets a text message: "Kolya, we shouldn't meet again. Marina "
Calls:
- Marish, but why, we loved each other?
"I heard you. I know everything.
"Err?"
- you said on the phone that you had papiloma biocelatum for half a year...
- Cichlosoma! Cichlosoma biocelatum!
"And labio syphilitis.
"
- Kolya, I still want to have children. I don't need venous diseases to fuck with...
...Everything! Nah!!! I don't talk about aquarium fish anymore in front of the girls...

You can't say better than Nabokov about the attitude of ordinary people to the entomologist:
***
In the Crimea of 1918, on a path over the Black Sea, among wax-blooming bushes, a rickety Bolshevik sentry wanted to arrest me for signaling (with a net, he said) to British warships. In the summer of 1929, when I was collecting butterflies in the Eastern Pyrenees, I never looked back as I walked through a village with a net and did not see the villagers standing in the same positions as I found them, as if I were Sodom and they were Lot's wives. Ten years later, in the Alpes-Maritimes, I once noticed the grass swaying softly and snakelike behind me, because a fat field gendarme was crawling on his stomach to find out if I was catching songbirds. America showed perhaps even more morbid interest in my retiarian pursuits — perhaps because I was in my late forties when I moved in, and the older a person is, the odder they look with a fishing net in their hands. Sullen farmers pointed out the no fishing sign to me; cars roared derisively as they sped along the highway; sleepy dogs, oblivious to the fetid tramp, snarled and snarled at me; little babies pointed me out to their puzzled mothers; broad-minded tourists wanted to know if I was catching beetles and one morning, in the desert near Santa Fe, among the tall yucca trees in full bloom, a huge black mare followed me for more than a mile.

One well-known entomologist (ZIN RAS) said that when he collected in Australia, in the national park, a helicopter landed next to him twice to check if he had a permit...

Wow!
And this is the coolest part.

One well-known entomologist (ZIN RAS) said that when he collected in Australia, in the national park, a helicopter landed next to him twice to check if he had a permit...

Here is a new topic for you: "The attitude of all GUARDIANS to entomologists"
The townsfolk are not chasing us by helicopter yet

Last year, my men and I went to catch a light near the shooting ranges of the Ministry of Defense (in England). They also raised the helicopter - it must have been hanging for half an hour, shooting a searchlight at us

The main thing is that shooting from it was not conducted

A friend of mine was lampboxing in Pakistan, near a military installation. Arrest. Prison. Heavy testing. Thank God he survived and was released.

A friend was in Jordan when the Arab-Israeli conflict began, so they were shot with a kalash. It's good that they didn't hit.

"Freaks!!!!!!!!