Blue is the rarest occurring colour in nature, with no true blue pigments in plants. In some ways, blue butterflies are natures way of completing the colour spectrum. From South American wonders to local Tropical icons, here's some stunning blue butterflies from around the world…
They are the bay checkerspot, Fender's blue, crystal skipper, the Miami blue, Saint Francis' satyr, and the rarest butterfly in the world, the Schaus swallowtail, whose habitat is sadly found in the sprawling metropolis of Miami. Of all six species together, only about 3,000 remain.
The blue morpho is known all over the world to be one of the world's most beautiful butterflies, and that's because of its bright blue color on the upperside of its wings. The underside of the blue morpho's wings looks different with a brown color and eyespots.
There are some 60 species in the United States, compared to about 1,100 worldwide. General colors in these mid-sized butterflies are usually white or yellow, while some species have orange-tipped wings or greenish marbling on the wings. The Cabbage White, perhaps the most common U.S. butterfly, is in this group.
Butterflies that appear pink are rare in nature. Often times, they are closer to purple, or possess translucent or colorless wings, but their shimmer could produce a pink effect in the sunlight. The pink and olive-colored Elephant Hawk Moth is often mistaken for a pink butterfly, but they are not.
This species has been described as the most variable butterfly in the world, with distinctive variations among females make finding two alike a rare occurrence. Printer : Southern Colour Print, Dunedin New Zealand.
The Purple Emperor is rare among butterflies. It avoids flowers, preferring rotting animal corpses, faeces, mud puddles - and even human sweat.
The blue morpho is among the largest butterflies in the world, with wings spanning from five to eight inches. Their vivid, iridescent blue coloring is a result of the microscopic scales on the backs of their wings, which reflect light.
Our simulation indicated that the Papilio vision is tetrachromatic, employing the ultraviolet, blue, green and red receptors. The random array of three ommatidial types is a common feature in butterflies.
There are a few butterflies across the world with a purple appearance. Some of these include: the Purple Emperor, the Colorado Hairstreak, the Purple Hairstreak, the Rhopalocera Singaporeana, the Purple Sapphire, the Karner blue, the Purple leafwing, and the Royal Assyrian.
Common and widespread, this medium-sized butterfly can be found in gardens and hedgerows.
The Palos Verdes blue butterfly is among the world's rarest. It's native to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in southwest Los Angeles County, California, the United States. Due to habitat destruction, the population of Palos Verdes blue butterfly has decreased sharply.
Some butterflies can create a rainbow of structural colors by merely tuning the thickness of their wing scale's bottom layer (the lamina), which creates iridescent colors just like soap bubbles, researchers report.
Are golden butterflies real? Right now, the internet is obsessing over this video of a butterfly pupae that looks like gold when you set your eyes on it. However, 'not everything that glitters is gold' stands true here. The pupae actually belongs to a species of butterfly named cream-spotted tigerwing.
The purple copper butterfly is one of Australia's rarest butterfly species and is only found in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales. Its habitat is restricted to elevations above 900 metres. The purple copper butterfly feeds only on a subspecies of blackthorn (Bursaria spinosa subspecies lasiophylla).
The white butterfly lives all over the world including Australia, Asia, and Europe. There are a total of 1,100 species of white butterfly worldwide. They are found in gardens, forests, and traveling over fields of weeds. Their bright, white wings and black spots make them hard to miss!
With a larger visual field than humans and excellent perception of fast-moving objects, their keen sight could be why the species is so abundant. All butterflies have the ability to distinguish ultraviolet and polarized light through their photoreceptors, the light detecting cells in color vision.
Swallowtails that belong to a group called Princeps nireus actually have fluorescent wings. This means that when the wings absorb a special type of light, called ultraviolet light (or “black light”), they give off a bright blue-green glow.
Human eyes have three types of cones that can identify combinations of red, blue, and green. Dogs possess only two types of cones and can only discern blue and yellow - this limited color perception is called dichromatic vision.
The Ulysses butterfly is found in most tropical rainforest areas such as Northern Queensland, Northern islands of Australia and Papua New Guinea and lives below the rainforest canopy. Did you know? Its common name is “Mountain Blue Butterfly” and is a large swallowtail butterfly.
Some species in the genus Calyptra are deemed “vampire moths”, actively seeking out and using their proboscis to suck the blood of vertebrates. The Malagasy Hemiceratoides hieroglyphica has been documented to land on the faces of sleeping birds to drink tears (lachryphagy) from underneath their eyelids!
The silver-studded blue (Plebejus argus) is a butterfly in the family Lycaenidae. It has bright blue wings rimmed in black with white edges and silver spots on its hindwings, lending it the name of the silver-studded blue.
The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus) is one of the most common and beautiful eastern butterflies. Individuals can be found anywhere east of the Mississippi river and a bit farther west into the Great Plains states. There are also populations in several Mexican states.
The Meadow Brown is the most abundant butterfly species in many habitats. Hundreds may be seen together at some sites, flying low over the vegetation. Adults fly even in dull weather when most other butterflies are inactive.
Fun fact: The stunning Scarlet Peacock butterfly is known to group in large masses of hundreds of butterflies, although it is very rare to spot.