University of Idaho Using Butterflies To Help Families

Many in the farming community know the important role butterflies play when it comes to crop pollination.  But, did you know the University of Idaho’s Department of Entomology is trying to use the insects to help grieving families in a unique way.

For the past four-years, entomology Professor Stephen Cook, and the students who work in his lab have reared butterflies to provide solace for grieving families.  Cook and his team have raised between 100 and 150 native painted lady butterflies to be released during a ceremony at the Share Hope Memorial Garden in Coeur d’Alene.

In many cultures, including Native American lore and Norse mythology, butterflies are revered as couriers capable of delivering messages from the living to the spiritual realm.

Auburn Crest Hospice in Coeur d’Alene and the Northwest Infant Survival and SIDS Alliance , which manages the memorial garden, invite bereaved friends and families they’ve served to attend the ceremony. The event includes a nondenominational service featuring words from an Auburn Crest chaplain, and a singer performs “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” before butterflies are released.

“We have had people come up and hug us and tell us it provided some closure,” Cook said. “If they did not have a chance to say goodbye as they feel would have been the appropriate way, it gives them the chance to say that last goodbye, and we’ve had multiple people tell us that.”

Cook and his team spent about six weeks raising the painted ladies from commercially purchased eggs, to caterpillars, to chrysalises to butterflies. Butterflies can live for up to two months in the adult stage with proper nutrition.

All five students in Cook’s lab this year volunteered to help raise the butterflies on their own time. In addition to participating in community service, the students got to hone their research skills, comparing health outcomes of insects fed diets of sugar water, energy drinks and juice from whole fruit. The students concluded butterflies that consumed fruit juice fared the best.

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