Butterflies are incredible in so many ways! Their beauty alone is good enough reason to admire them, but there’s so much more. Reacquaint yourself with their magic.
Listen on Podbean:
Listen on YouTube:
A few resources:
Butterflies: masters of disguise
Migration and overwintering (monarchs)
What happens inside a chrysalis? (sorry, I can only find this on one Facebook)
Monarch butterfly metamorphosis time-lapse (YouTube)
Monarch butterfly life cycle (YouTube)
Butterfly Conservation (UK-based butterfly and moth charity)
Music: Jens East — Daybreak (ft. Henk) www.soundcloud.com/jenseast
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution V4.0
Cover image of butterfly from Pixabay (artist: Trek_Jason https://pixabay.com/photos/butterfly-wings-insect-eye-plant-7949342)
Transcription (remember, this is a direct transcription of what I said and is not actually how I write!):
Welcome to 9 Minutes of Wonder. I’m Betsy Hedberg. I hope this podcast will help you rekindle your sense of wonder for this awe-inspiring world. If you like what you hear in the next few minutes, please subscribe and share.
Everyone loves butterflies, right? Or almost everyone. There may be some kids who are afraid of them, like I was.
One of my earliest memories is when I was maybe two years old, three years old, and I was outside and these huge butterflies, they were like as big as my head, were chasing me everywhere and I was freaking out — or I don’t know if I was freaking out, I kind of remember it being scary. And so I think I was afraid of butterflies for a while until I got bigger and realized that they’re actually not that big, and they’re beautiful.
A few years later, what I really wanted at my grandmother’s house in California was a butterfly net so that I could capture butterflies, just for a couple minutes, to take a quick look at them before I let them go again. And she had a beautiful garden with a lot of butterflies.
My grandmother had a gardener who showed me how I could use the butterfly net. But then he told me — and at least we hadn’t caught any real butterflies when he told me this, thank God — he told me how I could save the butterfly forever by pinning it to a piece of paper. I was appalled! I was probably six years old, seven years old, and I was not going to do that. There was no way I was going to kill those beautiful butterflies who I loved so much. I just wanted to observe them.
So I would still never kill a butterfly today. The only insect I feel comfortable killing is the mosquito. But instead, I love to admire them and hopefully help you admire them for the next few minutes.
People have been fascinated with butterflies for a really long time, and butterflies have held strong symbolic meaning for many cultures. For example, often being associated with the soul and with the soul being reborn after it dies, just like the caterpillar turns into a butterfly and then the butterfly flies off.
The largest butterfly, can you believe it, is the Queen Alexandra’s birdwing, which is an endangered species from Papua New Guinea with a wingspan of 25 to 28 centimeters, or about 10 to 11 inches. And there are 18,500 species of butterfly on all continents except Antarctica.
As you know, butterflies have all sorts of incredible adaptations and things that they do that we find almost magical.
For example, they’re really good at camouflage. The underside of many butterflies’ wings may look exactly like a leaf on the branch that they’re sitting on when they have their wings folded up. And many butterflies have markings and patterns that look very much like the plants that they like to be near.
And some butterflies you may have also seen have spots on the back of their wings that look a lot like eyes. So they hope the predator doesn’t come at all, but if the predator comes, they might try to just bite the back of the butterfly’s wings instead of the butterfly’s body, and then the butterfly can escape.
And scientists don’t know this for sure, but some butterflies, like the giant owl butterfly, have these eyes on their wings that might scare the predator into thinking that it’s dealing with an owl instead of a butterfly. I found that a little hard to believe because owls are bigger even than giant owl butterflies, but it’s very possible.
Butterflies also are very good mimics. So, for example, a harmless type of butterfly might resemble a toxic species. And that would signal to predators to beware and not to eat them, hopefully.
They also have chemical defenses, like the butterflies that are actually toxic. So the predators learn that they’re toxic, and they don’t mess with those butterflies.
Some other defenses that are interesting are the morpho butterflies. There are these bright blue butterflies in the tropical Americas, just gorgeous. I saw them in Peru, and they’re also really big. The morphos will flash their iridescent wings to confuse their predators, like just beams of light at them, and the predators get confused and don’t bother them.
Another fascinating thing about butterflies is their migration. They can migrate a really long distance.
Monarch butterflies migrate north from Mexico, where huge colonies of them cluster in trees during the winter. And they go to the northern United States and Canada over three to four generations. So in other words, one individual butterfly only makes it so far and then lays eggs and the life cycle, which we’ll talk about in a moment, creates new butterflies who continue the journey north.
But butterflies born in the north over the summer will be the ones who fly back to Mexico in the fall, and they’ll make it all the way there. So that is a very long distance. They have just been born. They’ve just, you know, become butterflies, and they haven’t had anyone to teach them the way. They just know how to get there.
How do they do it anyway? Scientists think that the butterflies look at the sun to guide them, but butterflies can even see polarized light, which lets them find their way even when it’s cloudy.
The longest butterfly migration is by the British painted lady. Within six generations, this butterfly will travel about 14,500 kilometers, or 9,000 miles, between tropical Africa and the Arctic Circle. It is really impressive that these tiny little insects with wings — I mean, they’re so much smaller than most birds, right — but they can travel so far, even though we’re talking about it taking several generations to get there. I still think it’s really impressive. And of course, how they can find the way.
But you know what? I think all of this is not even as interesting as the most incredible thing about butterflies, which, in my opinion, is how they become butterflies.
So the life cycle is egg to caterpillar, and then the caterpillar eats and eats and eats. And then they form a chrysalis, which is where they’re hanging upside down, usually from a branch, for up to a couple weeks. And then out comes a butterfly.
We all have learned about this cycle. And maybe you’ve been to a butterfly farm or butterfly zoo, whatever they call those places, where you’ve seen the chrysalis and you’ve seen butterflies going all over the place, and it’s beautiful.
But what happens in the chrysalis? That always seemed to be such a mystery to me.
So I looked that up, and you can read more about it too, or watch some videos. Oh, it’s so incredible.
After the caterpillar has made its chrysalis and is inside, the caterpillar inside releases enzymes, which start to dissolve its muscles, its digestive system, and other cells in its body. The enzymes leave the breathing tubes, which are of course very important, so the butterfly will still have the same breathing apparatus as the caterpillar did.
What happens next is new cells that have been dormant within the egg and the caterpillar start to activate. And over the course of generally a couple weeks, these cells develop into different parts of the butterfly.
And of course, eventually the butterfly is ready to come out of the chrysalis and fly around and mate and lay eggs and start the whole process again.
I don’t expect that this is anything you’ve never heard before. Most people are fascinated with this metamorphosis. But just take a minute and reflect on it. Like, nature has come up with this incredible way of changing. And if you see a caterpillar and you’re like, “Oh great, a caterpillar is eating my leaves,” or whatever — you just can’t be bothered with that caterpillar — think about its future and what an incredible opportunity it has, if you let it be.
You know, one time when I was about eight years old, I was riding my bicycle, and I saw a fuzzy caterpillar right in front of me, and I couldn’t swerve out of the way in time and I smushed it. I am a lot older than eight right now, and I still remember that caterpillar! So think about that the next time you see a caterpillar crossing the sidewalk.
I hope you can find some butterflies wherever you live. And if it’s not the right season for you now, of course it’ll come around and you’ll see them. Butterflies, again, are everywhere and they’re so beautiful.
If you’re listening to this on YouTube, I’d love to hear in the comments from you what your favorite butterfly is or if you’ve seen any really interesting ones or pretty ones this summer. And I will look forward to talking with you next time about something else.
Bye for now.