Tropical butterflies.

You may observe some fascinating facts and interesting behaviour in a butterfly house. Look out for it. It's right before your eyes.

Many butterflies show impressive colors. In most butterflies color pigments are in small scales on the wings.

Not so in the Blue Morpho. His scales do not have any pigments. So, why are so brilliant blue?

The ultrastructure of the scales look like a small comb. Light fraction induces the iridescent blue.

Male Morphos are attracted to blue. If you wear a light blue T-Shirt, you may get a visitor soon.

Caterpillars of certain butterflies eat poisonous plants and store the poison in their body. Therefore the butterflies get uneatable for birds and reptiles. These butterflies show warning colors. Just like wasps are painted in yellow-and-black. If a bird get a bad stomach once, he will learn quite soon, which butterflies you not be eaten.

 Poisonous butterflies often perform a lazy flying style. They want to be seen.

If predators have learned their lesson, there will soon be imitators. It’s a lot easyier to learn something only once. Some species are so good in imitation, that it is hard to tell them apart.

These two Heliconius-butterflies differ only in minor details. 

But butterflies see things different than we humans do. They can see polarized (i.e. broken) light, what we cannot. In polarized light similar species often look different.

In the evening Heliconius-butterflies get together at the same roosting places night after night. The roosting places are marked with a special scent. This behaviour helps against predators. A predator will eventually take one butterfly. But he will know in an instant, that this species doesn’t tast well.

Of course there are fakers that just pretend to be poisonous. That is much easyier that eating poison, digest that bitter stuff and store the poison in ones body.

The Diadem is completely non-toxic. The female only looks like a poisonous one.

Birds can be scarred away by big eye spots – at least for a moment. This moment sometimes helps to just escape.

If middle american butterflies are threatened, they fly off with loud cracking to startle predators. That gave them their name – Cracker.

Another way to escape predators is good camouflage. Leaf wings are perfect in this.

Now that you get caught, at least it should not cost your life. Blues often show eye spots and tails on their hindwings, that look like antenna. When at rest the “false feelers” are moved steadily to make the illusion complete. If a bird picks at the false head, the butterfly only looses a small piece of his wing und gets a second chance.

The thin sucker (proscobis) is good for liquid food only. Most butterflies feed solely on nectar. Nectar is rich in sugar, but does not contain many other nutrients such as protein, fat or minerals. This is the main reason why most butterflies live for just a few weeks.

The large swallowtails need so much energy, that they cannot stop for a drink. They flutter restlessly from one flower to the next.

Some species supplement their food with juices of overripe fruit, e.g. Bamboo Butterflies, Morphos or Red Cracker. Paper Kite Butterflies (or White Wood Nyphms) suck juices from wounded wood. Other butterflies take up honey dew, which is excreted from wood lice.

Male butterflies, e.g. most swallowtails, can be seen to take up minerals from wet earth or dung. (mud puddeling)

Male Glaswings must suck up substances from certain plants to build up peromones (sexual attractants).

Heliconius butterflies collect pollen to augment their diet. You may see yellow pollen on the proscobis in healthy heliconius butterflies.

Natural pollen sources are Psiguria (jungle cucumber), Gurania, Psychotria (Hot lips) and Lantana. Some heliconius butterflies learn to use pollen from passion flowers. They wait untill the flower withers (closes). Then they punture the flower and strip up the pollen.

The pollen is then mixed with saliva and moulded.You may see the little drop of saliva that is added to the pollen on the proscobis.

Some butterflies collect a hugh amount of pollen. Pollen has a high protein content. Because of this Heliconius butterflies live for up to 9 months. For butterflies, that’s stone old.

Wandering Monarchs are legend. Every years Monarchs spread from Mexico over the whole U.S. and reach Canada. In fall the butterflies fly back in one big migration to overwinter in a small wood in Mexico. There millions of Monarchs come together.

In favourable years African Yellows can show explosive reproduction. When food plants get short in supply the butterflies look for better places. Such a migration can consist of millions of butterflies.

Even in sedentary species some individuals leave their home range to settle at new places. Heliconius butterflies are confined to a definitive district. Mark-release-recapture experiments showed that these butterflies inhabit a clearly defined and well known district consisting of several square kilometers of jungle. They regularily visit the same nectar and pollen plants. Even at regulary time shedules.

Sure, the right partner has to look good and has to smell good. Male butterflies often are more colorful, whereas female are better camouflaged. (sexual dimorphism)

The male has to perform special rituals and produces charming fragrances to impress the females. Male Heliconius butterflies have scent scales on their forewing. They fly forth and back just above the female and spray their perfume onto her antennae to get her into the mood for love.

If she accepts him, mating takes place - and can last for several hours. If neccessary, they even fly without parting.

If she refuses, she streches up her back and sprays anti-pheromones.

In some species - such as Blood Moons and Clippers - male will establish distinct areas of their own that will be defended fiercely. You can see them on an outlook whatching out for any intruder. (perching) Females are wellcome. Anybody else will be driven away.

Male Zebra Longwings don't wait. They are allways on the wing and looking for females. (patroling)

Dawn is the right time for the nuptual flight of Owl Butterflies. They are quite passionate. If you get to a butterfly house late in the evening, there is a good chance to see this spectacle.

Monarchs are really furious. The male knocks the female out of the air in the middel of the flight. She will crash down to earth and mating take place. Not quite charming. 

Even one step further go certain Heliconius butterflies. Male visit food plants on a regularily loooking for female puppae. Just before she ecloses she will be mated.

At times several male compete for one female pupa. This can be dangerous for the eclosing female.

Mated females fly around looking for food plants for the kids. Plants are checked carefully. Only heathy plants of the right species and in the right place will be accepted. The plants are checked not olnyl visually. The female also uses her sence of smell, that is in her antennae, and her taste, that is on her fore legs and on the tip of her abdomen. Some butterflies even can have a look at the plant before oviposition (laying eggs). They have an accessory “eye” on the tip of their back side.

Caterpillars of the Lacewing live gregarious. When they loose contact to their pack they become disorientated and will eventually die.

Little swallowtail camouflage as bird troppings and get on their own quite well.

Some Heliconius caterpillars live a solitary life and will not tolerate any companion. There even may be cannibalism, e.g. in caterpillars of the Zebra-Butterfly.

To deter paratoids and predators some caterpillars develop bushy hairs or nasty stings.

Pupae (or chrystalis) are in no way dormant (sleeping) stages. It is stage of very active meatabolism. Wings, legs, sense organs and inner organs have to be rebuilt or formed completely new. Before eclosion pupae turn dark.

At the end of the process, color pigments of the wings develop. Beginning with yellow, then blue, red, brown and at the end – half a day before eclosion takes place - black.

Eclosion of a butterfly is allways exciting. The best time to observe this is in the morning. The old skin breaks open from the head down to the backside. The young butterfly crawls out.

He will hang on his old skin or on a twig and has to dry for one or two hours. After that the wings have hardened and the young butterfly can take off into a new life.