This butterfly is a perfect example of insect adaptation for survival! When flying through the sunny clear skies it looks very yellow and it's pretty noticeable- but when doing it's business of pollinating and eating it blends in with the leaves around it. It was feeding on a pineapple sage plant in my garden, and appeared to be exactly the same color as the leaves around it.
Another amazing thing is this butterfly is coming out during the beginning of the fall leaf change, which makes it blend in with the yellowing of the once green leaves, and the brown dots on it's wings are mimic of the beginning of leaf decay.
You can see in the pic right above where the pineapple sage leaf is intersecting the pic on the far right- it looks just like the butterfly! Neato!This butterfly is fairly shy and does not let ya get nearly as close to it as many of the common swallowtails...I had to stay pretty still and work up some kind of trust to get close- so I am super excited i got these pictures for ya'll!
XoXo
2 comments:
The Cloudless Sulphur (Phoebis sennae) is pretty cool, but its caterpillar is even more interesting, and its chrysalis is downright weird and beautiful.
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabast/Cloudless_Sulphur_ChrysalisBB.jpg
Gratuitous!
Wowsas - that cocoon is unbelievable! I don't think hardly anyone would ever notice something like that it looks perfectly like a changing leaf- I will have to find out which trees or plants they tend to hang on. I bet it's one who's leaves turn pinkish red during the fall.
Freaking cool!
Thanks for identifying it- I have so many bugs to do right now, be prepared.
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