Spend a moment in our Butterfly Rainforest with Ryan talking about the Tropical blue wave butterfly, Myscelia cyaniris, native to Central and South America. These small butterflies have vibrant iridescent upper wings and plain brown mottled underwings.
In the exhibit you’ll find these blue and white butterflies basking in the sun, or maybe they’ll be camouflaged on a branch with their wings closed. Look carefully!
Transcript
Hello. Welcome to the Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History. My name is Ryan. And today we’ll be releasing a butterfly called the Tropical Blue Wave and this butterfly hails from Central and South America and it’s a bit on the daintier side … see? There we go.
See this beautiful iridescent blue purple on its wings. As iridescence, the color can actually change as the butterfly moves around under the angle of the sun changes. It’s known as Myscelia cyaniris if you’re curious about its scientific name. And you’ll also note how small this butterfly is – its on the smaller side. You can see there, they’re taking off quite a bit.
On the outside, they look more like tree bark, so very much like the Blue morpho. The outside will look more like tree bark to camouflage itself and the inside is obviously much more colorful. There we go.
They’ve been very active today, but that’s okay. Now hopefully got a good little look at that beautiful blue color. I hope you get the chance to come in and see them and I hope you have a great rest of the day.
Thank you. Take care
About the Butterfly Rainforest exhibit
Support the ExhibitVideo by Ryan Fessenden; Produced by Radha Krueger