Hirst Killed 9,000 Butterflies

In a particularly messy piece of artistic metamorphosis, the Tate Modern in London revealed that 9,000 butterflies died during the 23-week run of a work by artist Damien Hirst. Titled In and Out of Love, the work featured live butterflies, some of which inevitably died and were replaced over the artwork’s run in batches of 400 a week. A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals condemned the loss of butterfly life, saying that there “would be a national outcry if the exhibition involved any other animal” and that butterflies “deserve to be treated with kindness.”