This is an owl butterfly, and what you are about to see is an extraordinary moment in it’s life.
It hasn’t yet flown, in fact it hasn’t even flapped it’s wings yet.
It’s hanging onto the chrysalis from which it emerged as an adult butterfly just hours before.
Its common name “owl butterfly” comes from this,
the two giant eyespots that give a shocking impression of the eyes of a much larger animal.
That butterfly is from the tropical forests of central America.
But it emerged from it’s chrysalis and I filmed it flying here in North Carolina.
In this museum we have a walk-in exhibit of a tropical forest, we
call it our ‘living conservatory’. The point of this exhibit is to create
an immersion for visitors. To experience a tropical habitat where they feel like they are
walking into a tropical forest. In this exhibit we have several living animals. We have a sloth,
we have several turtles in the center bed. We have a snake. But, our most numerous species
we have in the room are butterflies, of course. As the butterflies come in, we pin them up to
these strips and hang them up in this climate controlled emergence chamber. So we get about
300 butterflies every other week shipped to the conservatory from Costa Rica. Which the
public can view from outside. These butterflies on top, they take a little longer for their pupation
period. So they are just now starting to come out, as you can see with this blue morpho on top.
Watching an adult butterfly emerge is mesmerizing, and it’s a timelaspe video sequence I’ve always
wanted to film. So, I spent 3 days testing setups and eventually capturing this sequence.
First out is a blue-frosted banner. Once the adult squirms free of the pupal case,
it hangs and hangs around, inflating it’s body and wings by circulating fluids.
Next is a heliconius longwing.
And last, a monarch.
The conservatory is a place to experience these insects close-up. But, even with butterflies
it’s hard to appreciate their flight behavior with out a slow motion camera. So, here’s a
collection of sequences I captured by filming at rates of 13 and 32 hundred frames per second.
These are 2 species of long-wings in the genus Heliconius.
A thing I noticed about their flights is how actively they
swing and move around their long abdomen when they get into the air.
Watch in this sequence when the butterfly does a mid-air change
of direction with a down beat of the wings and an upswing of the abdomen.
This is one of the most iconic tropical butterflies, a blue morpho.
When this one lifts into the air you might notice something a little strange.
It’s not alone. It’s dragging behind a mate, still coupled together.
A lot of insect do this, flying around as an attached mating pair.
I’ve tried to capture it before while filming flies, but could never get a good sequence.
So, I was shocked to capture these. It’s incredible to me that only one
of the butterflies does all the work in lifting their combined weight.
Here’s a view of the brightly colored underside of the wing of a malachite.
Notice also the checkerboard eye patterning and the contrasting colors
of the topside of the wing as it takes flight.
Finally, this cattleheart waves it’s front legs around before springing into the air.
The best part about our butterfly conservatory is that it is one of the only ones in the country
that’s free. There’s no admission to our museum and there’s no admission fee for getting into that
exhibit. So, next time you’re in North Carolina, and we’re past all the COVID restrictions,
stop by the museum and visit with the butterflies. Thanks for watching.