Collect them all!

This almost makes me want to return to my childhood hobby of collecting baseball cards! Upper Deck, famous sports card company, has issued a new set of old-timey baseball cards, but sprinkled amoungst them are beauties such as these:

(Courtesy of ESPN News)

(Courtesy of Upper Deck)

How cool is that?!

Upper Deck refers to them as “DNA Memorabilia Cards” which is a little elusive, but I believe it means that these are actually shadow boxes with the real insects inside (and judging by that leg-less, antennae-less “tiger swallowtail”, they really are going for the old-timey look). The full set includes 30 insects, most of which are butterflies, but there are some cool things like bullet ants, some spectacular orthopteroids, and a few fulgorids (lantern-flies, similar to the one I featured).

Someone should teach Upper Deck about proper binomial nomenclature though…

But wait, it appears that proper nomenclature is the least of their troubles! I’m pretty sure that isn’t even Papilio glaucus! I’m not a lepidopterist by any stretch of the imagination, and seeing as randomly generated points are all the rage in entomology blogs, I’ll give 15 shiny new BioPoints to anyone who can identify what this butterfly really is!

I’m giving Upper Deck a 10/10 for cool factor, but 4/10 for checking their homework!