James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American artist during the American Gilded Age and best known for his painting which is ‘mistakenly’ known Whistler’s Mother. The actual name of  the painting is ‘Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1.’ He often referred to his paintings as arrangements. (See that one year of liberal arts finally came in handy for me)

Now you may say ‘Sure Rick that may win you a drink in a very strange bar but what does it have to do with butterflies?’ Around 1870 Whistler began signing his painting and letters with a very stylized butterfly. Although it had flowing wings it had a long stinger for a tail. It was said that this pretty much described old Jimmy Boy’s personality because although his paintings had a subtle delicacy to them in real life he could be a real butthole. The cool part is that his butterfly signatures became almost if not more important than his actual paintings. Many people who had purchased his painting prior to his butterfly signature brought them back to Whistler to have them signed again but this time with his now famous Lepy Logo.

Now you may say ‘Sure Rick but what does Whistler have to do with moths?’ The North American walnut sphinx moth caterpillar (Amorpha juglandis) is a Whistler too! It is often referred to as a whistling caterpillar due to sounds that it produces by compressing its body like an accordion and forcing air out of its 8^th spiracle.  The 8^th spiracle thing was discovered by researchers at the University of Montana. The most amazing part is that the whistle is strikingly similar to calls made by black-capped chickadees and house finches to announce that there was a predator in the area. There were several studies done showing that when a walnut sphinx moth caterpillar was placed in cages with birds as soon as it gave off the whistle the birds all dove for cover. Now how cool is that? The same held true when the caterpillars were placed on outside bird feeders and forced to give off the distress call. All the birds immediately scattered to escape a possible but unseen predator in the area.