The Insect Expo is Australia's largest convention of bug lovers, scientists, nerds, artists,
weirdos and everything in between.
It's a labor of love of Dr. Burt Candusio, his daughter, Jess and his team at the Central
Victorian Regional Insect Collection, and it brings a kitsch, eccentric and homely vibe
to the sleepy town of Wood End.
For the past two years, I've made the safer pilgrimage to the Buffalo Sports Stadium,
butterflies, moths, stick insects and other creepy crawlies in tow.
I'm Clarice and I'm an insect taxidermist second and a genetic student at Melbourne
Uni First.
My interest in bugs started young, way too young to remember.
I collected insects and I was lucky enough to have a really supportive mum who at one
point helped me trap a wasp using a picnic basket and a tupperware and subsequently
euthanized it in our fridge and freezer.
Needless to say, my dad got a massive shock when he opened the freezer to get some ice
cream that night.
As a kid, I thought my interest in insects was weird, anti-social even.
Luckily I grew out of this when, as a teenager hosting a sleepover, my friends discovered
the insect collection that had been collecting dust under my bed and to my surprise, they
were delighted.
Three years ago, seeing the demand for odysseys and curiosities, I decided to open up my
shop Insect Emporium as an alternative to working minimum wage at KFC.
And I haven't looked back since, it's been a dream job and I'm a firm believer that
the people who like insects are some of the nicest people out.
However, when Jess messaged me on Instagram about the Insect Expo in 2022, I thought it
was some kind of extremely elaborate scam.
I couldn't get my head around it.
How could there possibly be enough people interested in bugs and other creepy crawlies
to justify an expo?
I only became convinced of its legitimacy later when Bert called me up to confirm if
I was interested.
I was pumped.
I was a 20 year old uni student and I was on the expo list alongside some of the biggest
names in the oddities community in Melbourne.
People like Violet Eyes Entomology, Rest in Pieces and Articulated Imagination, all huge
names whose work I admired.
Over the next few weeks, I grinded my ass off to somehow pass my epigenetics and evolutionary
genetics class, in addition to pinning and framing about 40 butterflies and creepy crawlies.
Still, I was terrified.
What if no one came?
Do enough people really like bugs to come to a sports stadium in a little regional Victorian
town, buy a ticket and THEN buy a bug from me?
What if I'm an abject failure?
What if all the other, older, more experienced taxidermists laugh at me?
The expo rolled around on a Friday and lo and behold, no one laughed me out of the house.
Bert opened the expo with a really squeaky microphone and people began to trickle in.
It was slow by virtue of it being both a school and work day and it was cold.
I sold a whip scorpion to a nice young collector who was after something spooky and unique.
The next day, however, was a completely different story.
I was astonished by the number of people and the diversity of the crowd.
Kids vibrating with excitement at stick insects and tarantulas.
Collectors young and old scouring the taxidermy stores for Spanish moon moths and deaf-said
hawkmoths, entomologists talking passionately with citizen scientists, people inexplicably
dressed as bugs.
It was a good day for my wallet but a great day for my soul.
I left the expo that weekend invigorated, convinced that bugs and those who love bugs
have the power to heal the world through their sincerity, their empathy for all things weird
and their unconventional creative ways of thinking.
That's why this year I brought along my bestie Zofia to help document it.
Hi, my name's Zofia.
I'm a science communicator from Melbourne but more importantly, I'm Clarice's friend
from high school.
And Zofia, before we get started on documenting all the awesome things here, I just wanted
to address the elephant in the room.
Do you think that my job is weird?
Well.
Yeah.
Yeah?
Yeah, do you think your job is weird?
You have a giant Tupperware container of bugs that you keep under your bed and bring out
at parties?
Yeah, yeah.
I find it goes down well when it's like 1am at a house party and people have had like
four or five drinks.
You know, it really gets people in the mood for bugs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I've experienced this.
The Tupperware container comes out, the people love it.
And the people cheer, one more bug, one more bug, and I'll pull out whatever bugs I have.
You know, and you know, it's always met with raucous applause.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is, you know, most of these people, while sober, don't even think twice about,
you know, bugs they see on the street.
So you know, maybe that's the secret to getting people to empathize more with bugs is to just
get them absolutely plastered.
Anyway, as I briefly mentioned earlier, I hid my insect collection as a kid because
I thought it would cement my status as a weirdo and a freak.
But what exactly is weird or freaky about collecting bugs?
Maybe media is to blame.
The cultural trickle down of Lolita's creepy lepidopterous main character and Sylvia Plath's
entomology related daddy issues?
That could be the case.
The widespread and easily used archetype of the cruel and selfish collector who would
rather keep beauty dead in a museum than allow it to roam alive in the wild.
But how closely do real collectors resemble this archetype?
I know I, alongside most other collectors I've met, are animal lovers who responsibly
source.
But despite running insect aquarium for three years now, I'm still only scratching the
surface of the question.
Who are collectors and why do they collect?
And I'm eager to find out.
And what better way to do this than to interview a man with over 30,000 insect specimens?
Cleve Heard is a collector and amateur entomologist.
Amateur here meaning someone who does what he does out of pure love, for what he does
is by no means unprofessional.
Just letting you know that.
Yeah, no worries.
But yeah, would you be able to introduce yourself and what you've got here?
My name's Cleve Heard and I've been collecting for more than 40 years.
I've got about 30,000 specimens in my collection now.
We're conducting this interview in front of a large case filled with hundreds of beautiful,
highly sought after bird wing butterflies that Cleve collected on one of his many trips
to Papua New Guinea.
Many of the cases are built by Cleve himself and he goes to great lengths to maintain the
collection and ward off museum beetles, whose favourite snack are the insect collections
of careless people.
Maintaining his collections, it seems, is a full time job and costly at that.
You were telling me earlier that if you had to replace the pins in your collection, I
can't remember the figure, could you say it for us?
Yeah, I worked it out roughly, it's about $2,500 worth of pins, so to replace the pins.
Absolutely insane.
A lot of pins, yeah.
But by far, the craziest thing about Cleve's collection is that this isn't even his day
job.
It's so interesting that I think you're transitioning towards doing this as your full
time job, but for a long time this wasn't your full time job.
No, no, well still not really.
I'm a carpenter by trade so I've done that most of my life so I'm just trying to wind
that down and wind this up, transition into doing this a bit more full time if I can make
enough money out of it to pay for my hobby as well, as well as make a living, that'd
be awesome.
But Cleve is not just a collector, he also breeds Australian moths as part of his collection
process.
And in doing so, he documents aspects of their life cycles, some of which have never before
been documented.
That's so cool, yeah.
So by doing that, have you been able to contribute to the body of the scientific knowledge about
these moths?
Yeah, there's a few scientific papers in the process of being written on a few things,
so I'm hoping to get a few papers written, especially on distribution, food plant records,
things like that.
It's all great, I love it.
In our era of hyper-specialised science, where people such as myself and Sophia have to undergo
years and years of late nights cramming for exams, red bull addiction and procrastinative
doom scrolling to become qualified researchers, it's pretty revitalising to see someone who's
been able to contribute so much to science while still retaining his love for it.
And it's just amazing, someone like you has so much knowledge just from years and years
of just passion.
Yeah, well when you're passionate about something you want to learn, it's not hard to learn
when you're passionate because you want to know and you just remember and it just goes
with it.
Anyone who's passionate about anything they do, they seem to be able to absorb the knowledge
because they want to know and they just love it.
It goes hand in hand with all sorts of things.
So if you're really passionate and you really love it, you learn, just learn by default.
Cleve is what you'd call a citizen scientist.
Someone not academically trained in a particular field, but a valuable contributor nonetheless.
Looking around the expo, there are many, many citizen scientists and much, much work to
do regardless of age or experience level.
Older gentlemen digitising the ant section of the central regional Victorian insect collection?
Check.
Young woman dedicating her free weekends to help survey ant blue butterflies for threatened
species conservancy?
Check.
The list goes on and on.
Anyway, moving on.
How do you see the role of your collection as opposed to an official museum collection
or something like that?
Museums have got, in recent times they've had a lot of collections being donated and
they're short of room, they're short of staff, they're short of funding as many of these
things go.
But I hope to be able to deposit my collection when the time's right.
I'm not ready to give it away yet.
When the time's right I can deposit it in one of the institutes, many of which in Queensland
or Sydney or, yeah, I haven't really got that far yet, but hopefully they'll want it and
I'll take it.
They'll be interested in the Australian stuff probably more so than the OTC stuff.
Yeah, I'd like to leave it to one of my children or something like that, but they're not really
that way inclined.
So I don't know if they'll look after it.
But I'll certainly find a home for it somewhere one day.
Surely, just give it to me.
Awesome.
Yeah, thanks so much.
We left our chat with Cleve with a very optimistic impression of collectors.
Cleve was no creepy archetype but rather a soft-spoken carpenter, passionate about collecting
butterflies and studying them.
Cleve among other collectors and taxidermists, sources specimens responsibly and sustainably.
Despite people like Cleve, many are still understandably sceptical about butterfly collection.
Nobody likes to see a thing of beauty killed.
However, this is where people need to actually be educated on what exactly responsible and
sustainable sourcing means.
Yeah, right.
So Clarice, you're a taxidermist who sources responsibly and sustainably.
So maybe you're best fit to answer this.
How can killing butterflies possibly be responsible or sustainable?
And wouldn't collecting butterflies put those butterflies that get collected at greater
risk of extinction?
Okay, so first things first, sourcing responsibly means different things for different collectors
and taxidermists.
I personally only buy specimens from farms, mostly in Indonesia and Peru.
These are farms which are set up on patches of rainforests and they often coincide with
ecotourism initiatives.
So these farms are mutually beneficial for both local people and rainforest ecosystems.
Selling farm specimens and facilitating ecotourism allows local economies to bloom and also incentivizes
the protection of rainforests, as more money can be made from insect farming than from
logging or industrial agriculture.
Ultimately, this means that buying insects from these initiatives, you are actually helping
preserve insect habitat and it is the destruction of insect habitat, not insect collection,
that poses a greatest threat to insect extinction.
These conservation through development strategies are actually recommended by the IUCN, International
Union for the Conservation of Nature, in preference to national park strategies when it comes
to developing nations, as they more tightly link conservation with development opportunities.
So for us laypeople, what are national park strategies?
So national park strategies are basically strategies for conservation which involve
completely protecting an area of land and all of the animals within it.
So you can't go to, say for instance, Yellowstone National Park and kill bison.
And this works really well in developed countries because we have less of a need to rely on
the land for our own economic benefit.
But in developing countries, unfortunately, national park strategies do not work as well
because there are less economic opportunities for people and people are more likely to then
poach from these national parks in an unregulated way.
So that's really, really interesting, but Cleve was saying that he's personally collecting
these butterflies.
How can personally catching butterflies be responsible or sustainable?
What if too many people collect from the wild?
Is that going to depopulate these wild populations of butterflies?
Yeah.
So interesting you mention over collection.
Off record, Cleve actually mentioned a study done in the 60s by two biologists called Dr.
Carver and Dr. Detear Menon.
The two purposefully tried to over collect a butterfly called the Baltimore in fields
in New England and they failed.
So this study should be taken with several grains of salt.
The butterfly species collected was common and obviously the results of this study cannot
be applied uniformly to every environment.
However, it shows that unlike vertebrate hunting and poaching, which generally plummets vertebrate
numbers due to long generation time and low initial population numbers, invertebrate collection
is far less likely to do so due to short generation time and higher initial invertebrate numbers.
And when you say vertebrate hunting, that's what we'd sort of traditionally think of as
poaching.
So tigers, rhinos.
Yep.
Gorillas, et cetera.
So like all of those animals, of course, have really, really long generation times and they
spend a lot of time rearing their young, et cetera.
Whereas insects, a lot of insects, you know, they have generation times of only a few weeks.
The longest generation time, I think, and I might need to be corrected on this, is for
a specific type of cicada in the US, which actually lives underground for 17 years.
And it comes up to scream for three weeks and then dies, which is honestly the ideal
lifestyle.
But aside from these rare exceptions, most invertebrates have comparatively quite short
generation times.
So because of this, when invertebrates are caught, it's far easier for them to repopulate
an area that might have been depopulated by catching insects.
So wild collection can also be regulated and monitored, as is the case in Papua New Guinea,
where Cleve gets a majority of his overseas specimens.
Now Papua New Guinea is really, really unique in that its government officially recognizes
insects as a renewable resource.
And in doing so, a farming and trading agency was established which issues export permits
for insects.
So it's only through their paperwork, their certification, that sites endangered species
are not being harvested unlawfully, that specimens can actually exit the country.
So what are sites endangered species?
So sites endangered species are species which are on a list put out by the IUCN.
So these are species which are protected species, essentially.
They're endangered species and they're recognized as such across borders.
So yeah, that's why it's really important that specimens that are site species, endangered
species or protected species, are labeled as such so that governing bodies can actually
understand if specimens are being illegally poached.
And Australia is really serious on the endangered species front too.
That's why I'm so glad that the farmers I buy from actually fill out all the paperwork
for me.
What is the paperwork situation like for insect taxidermy?
Oh, it would be a nightmare to fill out myself, I'll tell you that.
So my paperwork includes date collected, euthanasia methods, species names, how the specimens
are sterilized, which is for biosecurity reasons, and also if there are any site species present.
Actually one time my paperwork fell off a parcel and I got a really scary letter from
the Department of Agriculture which said that if I didn't provide paperwork, my specimens
were gonna be incinerated and I would either get a $10,000 fine or a few years in prison.
Luckily I had a PDF copy of the paperwork to send them.
Otherwise that seriously would have done a number on my Fitzroy Inner North lifestyle.
How would you slay on the streets of the Inner North if you were in prison for smuggling?
There would be no Brunswick Street Arleigh Montag, there would be no pints at the Black
Cat, there would be no yayas, it would be impossible.
I'm not sure how I could deal with being in prison for smuggling wildlife.
Smuggling insects?
Yeah, no, I couldn't.
I would not survive.
With a community as diverse and colorful as a community of collectors and taxidermists,
it's no wonder that regardless of how legally scrupulous the vast majority are, there are
those who are not.
And sometimes these characters are the most hot-headed.
A few years back when I was just starting to get into collecting, I contacted a seller
on eBay.
He had beautiful specimens and great prices, but something seemed off.
Every message he sent me was angry and choleric.
He seemed almost annoyed that I was trying to buy off of him.
So I looked up his username and I found some aged beef on insect.net.
I'm so excited to hear this ancient beef from insect.net.
This is everything to me right now.
Yeah, but unfortunately this post has since been deleted.
So we'll have to do our best to approximate its tone and content, sans being specific
about the seller himself, as I wouldn't want to misrepresent a real person, but rather
to give insight into the petty and outlandish dramas that you can find on insect trading
websites in dark corners of the internet.
Without further ado, the aged beef.
Username Butterflylover69.
Hi everyone.
I'm just getting into collecting and I've come across an eBay seller by the name of Redacted.
This seller has a great selection on their eBay, but they claim to have around 400,000
specimens in their personal collection.
Seems a bit outlandish to me.
Username Ornithopsoficionado420.
Yeah, I've bought from Redacted before.
Would not recommend it.
He sold me an A1 birdwing with a broken antenna.
Username Redacted.
And on what basis, Ornithopsoficionado420, should anyone believe you?
I'll have you know my collection sits at a comfortable 400,000 specimens.
Far more extensive than anything you could ever get your grubby little paws on.
Username Ornithopsoficionado420.
Yeah right, you fraud.
Username Redacted.
A fraud?
How dare you?
How dare you call me a fraud?
I'll have you know that I obtained my PhD with high distinction from Leap University
and now I am the number one supplier in the United States.
How ironic of you, you plebeian Ornithopsoficionado420 to have such a name when I have the most extensive
collection of bird wings in the United States.
Who are you?
Ornithopsoficionado420, who the fuck are you?
Redacted's profile picture on insect.net was dated to say the least.
It's a seafia-tinted film photo of a handsome young man in wrestling gear.
A quick Google reverse image search reveals it's of the Leap University wrestling team
1965.
And is sitting front and center, shoulders back, muscles flexed with a neck like the
rocks and an intimidating stare.
This is the kind of man you wouldn't want to cross, not even 50 years later, on an archived
insect collectors forum populated by meek butterfly nerds.
Years passed and I forgot about Redacted.
So you can imagine my surprise when one day I was browsing the New York Times and his
name was in the headlines.
Long Island Man Redacted facing up to 20 years in prison under wildlife smuggling charges.
Long story short, after losing his importation license a year before, he'd illegally traded
around 200,000 US dollars worth of specimens, some of them on the Sites list, by telling
his suppliers to disguise specimens by mislabelling them as paper ornamentations.
Screw US Fish and Wildlife Service, they are a gang of orangutans, he had been quoted.
The world of insect collecting can get messy as seen by Redacted's final anti-authoritative
stand.
Forums like insect.net are routinely filled with arguments about all too strict collecting
laws and which species should be on protected lists.
But bug collectors, even at their worst, most slimy larval state, are motivated by passion,
a passion for the beauty of the natural world.
And at their best, that is for the vast majority of bug collectors, this passion metamorphizes
into citizen science and conservation projects.
Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Thoughts That Bug Me and tune in the next
time to learn about the fascinating world of insects in art.
Thanks for listening, see you later grubs.