I thought it was interesting! I raise milkweed on my property specifically for the Monarch butterflies that use it to lay eggs. I have never seen them scratching the plants, although they do like to spend time on them. Maybe that is why these butterflies are a bright orange (denoting toxicity). Another interesting factoid.

Rothbardian_fanatic

I read this as "kleptopharmacology" and I thought this was going to be about kleptomania in the pharmaceutical industry.  

I am disappoint

SimpleStacker

science

This fancy term describes a behaviour of some butterflies. Colourful, pretty and defenseless one might think. Not quite. Some species know how to make themselves inedible. They scratch toxic plants and absorb the juice (e.g. the hepatotoxic alkaloid retronecin). Some go even further. On the indonesian island Sulawesi biologists observed butterflies scratching and wounding catterpillars to drink alkaloid-rich exsudate from the injuries. Some butterflies were so immersed in the mutilation that they didn´t even fly away when touched by the scientists.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     