I raise all my butterflies outside on my front porch, Marco, but there are huge numbers of cats on my pipevines outside, raising themselves. I found a pipevine swallowtail hanging on the inside of a rocker on a rocking chair on the porch the other day - its chrysalid was on the back of the chair! This one crawled as a caterpillar from the vines in my garden to pupate. Pipevine swallowtails eat aristolochia, which apparently makes them as distasteful to predators as the books say, because they're one caterpillar that never gets touched! Pipevine swallowtails are battus philenor - I LOVE them! I don't know the answer about zebra longwings and gulf fritillaries overwintering. Don't you live in an apartment? Three GF caterpillars overwintered here for the first time this year, but it was because they were on p. caerulea, which is real cold hardy, and it kept leaves all winter. They apparently hid in the leaves, because I didn't see them until it was almost spring, and they must have either gone into some sort of suspended state on the vines or eaten just little bits at the time over the winter. We had a mild winter, but we did have a few light freezes, no colder than 30 degrees, as I recall. I had been wanting to overwinter a GF as a chrysalid, thinking that was the way to go, but the chrysalids always turned black and died. I never dreamed they'd overwinter as cats! I've never raised any zebra longwings, but I'm guessing the situation is the same, except that zebras are probably more cold sensitive than GFs. I wish I could raise some! MissSherry

Wow, it looks like she left you the mother lode there, Sherry! ;-) I think the most I ever had in a bunch was about 24. They're my very favorite caterpillar to raise. I love to put a few lengths of vine in a big storage container and watch the cats scurry along on their way to somewhere that I guess they have in mind. They always make it look like it's urgent. Ha. That's a Carolina wren for ya, building a nest in such a strange place. One year I had a pair build a nest on one of the shelves in my workshop after those little opportunists sneaked in there a few days when I had the door open and made themselves right at home. I didn't shut the door again until after the babies fledged. I have bluebird houses stacked up in our corncrib and one year the Carolina wrens made a nest in one of them even with it turned upside down. My dad had one build a nest in his fishing net one yet. Out of all of the birds that I get here, I call them the most eccentric. :) They sure are cute little things and they love the peanut butter/cornmeal/shortening mix that I put out in a log feeder for them in the winter. Cathy

"Funny Sherry I was wondering the same thing about inbreeding, never have seen any mention of it when reading about captive breeding." When I showed up here almost 7 years ago, I took some people to task about the way they were releasing large numbers of inbred giant silk moths. That went over like a lead weight so I have pretty much kept my mouth shut since then. Ladobe criticized one of our members about it last year but no one followed up on it. The quote was "Besides weakening the gene pool, forced inbreeding produces low egg viability, high malformation risk and so therefore high mortality. Not a good practice." One consequence of moth inbreeding helped cause a shift in USDA policy last month. The USDA no longer regulates interstate shipments of Bombyx mori. Those moths are so inbred they can no longer survive in the wild. I raise relatively large numbers (up to 400 of one type) of Saturniidae every year. I go to great lengths to try to make sure the wild males that my girls mate with are not the brothers or the male first cousins that I released. I also try to make sure my released males and females do not mate with each other. I do this by doing releases at least 10 miles (usually more) from my house and releasing the females and males at least 10 miles (usually more) away from each other. I used to mark my males to make sure they were not finding their way home but quit being that paranoid after years of never getting one back. I release at least 10 miles away because 7 miles seems to be the generally accepted maximum distance that a male Saturniidae can follow a female's pheromones. That said, I have seen a claim that male giant silk moths can follow female pheromones for "nearly 30" miles. YMMV I preface my next statement by saying I have no clue how this guy operates. There is a guy in Ohio that raises 3k-4k cecropias each year. I read that he has been raising them since '86. Something wiped out his cats in 2008 and he had to start over in 2009. I'm real curious if inbreeding affected his setup and I'd like to know what happens to all the moths he doesn't sell (IOW, do they get let go). As for inbreeding butterflies and affecting the gene pool, there is a lot of info/controversy on the net about it because of people raising butterflies for mass release at weddings. One related article I have posted before is linked at the end of this post. Last thought: I know of one inbred butterfly that has been studied a lot: monarchs on Hawaii. I believe around 20% of them are white now. My guess is they do alright because the favorable weather conditions don't put a lot of stress on them. They would probably have trouble with migrating to Mexico and surviving the winters there. Anyway, there is a lot of research out there about them. KC Here is a link that might be useful: All Aflutter

Sherry, I love Pipevine Swallowtails, but if I ever raise any more, it's going to have to be in the big cage or else just raise a dozen or two in the small plastic containers. I like to watch them because they're kind of comical, and so I had wanted to raise a lot...BUT when you raise a lot like that it really gets to be a grind, and I was resenting that I wasn't getting much of anything else done around here. I'm glad to hear that they can raise themselves. Then I won't feel so guilty leaving lots of them on the vines. The ones that are out there are on their own. As far as I know there are no cats yet, but I think there are tons of eggs on the vines. Hopefully the vines will be enough to take all of them to adulthood. Every time I went outside this week, there was a female flying around the pipevine laying eggs. Speaking of the pipevine, thank you very much for that information about the pipevine liking lime. It's funny that you said that because today I just sent my husband downtown for some lime to put in my flower beds. A lot of sourgrass comes up in my flower beds/gardens and since I remember reading that it favors acidic soil (which I think ours must be after several years of adding mulch), I want to make the soil here more alkaline. Now that I know pipevines like limestone, I'm going to put some of the lime in the soil around the pipevines. I forgot to mention that I've had at least half a dozen PVS that couldn't make it out of their pupas. Do you have that problem? I don't include those in my released count. So far we've released 160, and I haven't counted how many are left, but because of the deformed ones I've had, I'm pretty sure our count will be under 200. I'm glad that most of them make it though. It's just that I thought it was strange and a higher than "normal" count of deformed ones. I brought all of the eggs in that were on the Baptisia australis, including the ones on the filaments, so then I'll be able to see what they turn out to be. I remember someone talking about that kind of eggs some time ago, but I don't recall what creature comes out of them. Maybe I should even move them into a separate container in case whatever it is preys on cats. I've been so busy lately that I haven't even gotten a chance to look in on the eggs/cats. I thought I'd only have the WIDs to raise for now (excluding the PVS that I'm leaving outside), but today when I was taking the flowers off of the rue (if I don't, I end up with lots of little plants coming up in the spring), I found 3 BST cats that are 2nd-3rd instar. I hope they weren't parasitized by wasps. When I raised some a few years back, I ended up with 4 wasps the next spring. I don't know what instar those cats were in when I found them; maybe they were bigger cats than these are that I just found. I've seen Monarchs here several times this year, but as far as I know, I don't have any eggs on the milkweed yet. I have over 100 tropical milkweed plants in the garden, about 20 in pots, 24 butterfly weed plants in the garden, and about 40 purple milkweed plants that I'm just starting out with this year in 3-gallon pots. I just hope that those will do well in the pots. I've never tried them before. I grow swamp milkweed in pots with no problem. I'm really hoping that these milkweed plants get used this year. Cathy