XSworld

By XSworld

Other side..

Just as me that prefers to be on the viewfinder side of the camera, this skipper wanted to be on the other side of the dwarf pincusion flower. The real reason is that he is such an emperical skipper and wanted to see for himself if there was nectar to be found on the underside of the flower. Conclusion. No nectar.
It was probably due to his investigation that he didn't fly off when I approached with my lens. Why should he have flown away, well, to much annoyance of photographers, insects are equipped with a socalled startle reflex, a fast escape response that bypasses cerebral processing and voluntary movement to defend themselves from a threat. As the circuits involved are short, the reaction is much quicker than any voluntary reactions, so they don't WANT to eacape (at least not yet), they just DO! As it so happens, skippers have among the shortest startle reflex times recorded in the animal kingdom. So if a skipper feels threatened by you approaching with the camera, he will automatucally fly off!
The reason this has been studied is described by the researcher from Florida in his article "While photographing butterflies with a digital camera for several years, I have become convinced that skippers possess an extraordinary reflex time when startled by a photographic flash".

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