Spend a moment in the Butterfly Rainforest with Ryan talking about the unusual green butterfly called the Tailed Jay, Graphium agamemnon. Also known as Green Triangle, this species of butterfly is native to Southeast Asia.
Here in the exhibit you’ll see these butterflies basking in the sun or fluttering their wings fast as they feed on flowers.
Transcript
Welcome back to the Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History. My name is Ryan. And today we are going to be doing one of the green butterflies, which is a rather uncommon color for butterflies in the world, which is a bit of a shame really. We’re going to go with the butterfly known as the Tailed Jay, although some places do call it the Green Triangle for the somewhat triangular shape of its wings. See, there we go.
It has this lovely kind of apple-green speckling on the inside of his wings and they’re called Tailed Jays because it’s a whole group of butterflies from Southeast Asia that are referred to as jays: the Common Jay, the Blue Jay and so on and so forth. But none of them have tails at all. Not to say that this is a spectacular tail, but it is a tail.
Like other butterflies in its family, the swallowtail family, Graphium agamemnon here likes to keep its wings fluttering very fast, very much like a hummingbird. They’re not going to sit still when they are feeding on a flower. And this is true for most swallowtailed butterflies that Tailed Jays are especially known for this.
They are considered an urban species of butterfly in their home range of Southeast Asia. They are common in urban environments similar to say a Monarch here in the United States.
And off he goes.
They blend in very well but unfortunately we couldn’t see in this video is that even though the green is where it really takes the spotlight if you get a chance to see one up close when you get a chance to visit the butterfly house in the future you’ll want to look at its body and it has this lovely pink hue in addition to it.
Now I hope you all remain healthy and happy, remain safe and have a great rest of the day. Thank you.
About the Butterfly Rainforest exhibit
Support the exhibitVideo by Ryan Fessenden; Produced by Radha Krueger