You know what I mean. Gruesome-minded kid and/or scientific-minded entomologist takes a butterfly or a moth and secures it to a piece of cardboard with the aid of a straight pin. I keep feeling like there’s a longish name for this, admirable in its simplicity, but I can’t recall it for the life of me. Does such a term exist? If so, what is it? And what body part is it through which it is customary to stab the butterfly/moth? Thorax?
Impalement?
It’s called pinning, or mounting.
Mounting?
(heh. she said “mounting.”)
I can’t think of a more technical term than pinning or mounting (and I’ve pinned my share of insects). And yes, the insect is normally pinned through the thorax.
The study of butterflies is lepidoptery, if that’s more like the word you had in mind.
While entomologists use pins that are straight, they aren’t what are commonly called “straight pins.” They use insect pins, which are “longer, stronger and thinner than an average pin.”