Our upcoming March event, Bayonets and Butterflies, required us to do quite a bit of research on butterflies in museums. We found some fantastic information as well as links, and we’d love to share them with you.
Did you know?
- Monarch butterflies journey from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of about 2000 miles, and return to the north again in the spring.Then knowing that…… the next fact is amazing!
- The Brimstone butterfly (Gonepterix rhamni) has the longest lifetime of the adult butterflies: 9-10 months. They often live for just a few weeks.
- Many butterflies can taste with their feet to find out whether the leaf they sit on is good to lay eggs on to be their caterpillars’ food or not.
- Butterflies live on an all-liquid diet
- Butterflies can’t fly if they’re cold
WA Museum – The Butterfly Gallery (click to visit) – Detailing the preservation of the WA Museum’s butterfly collection.
WA Museum – Butterfly Cross Pinning (click to visit) – A short video of Western Australian Museum Entomology Curator Nikolai Tatarnic cross-pinning specimens being decanted from the Butterfly Gallery.
Parks and Wildlife Service – Butterfly Gardening (click to visit) – How to select plants to bring more butterflies to your garden.
Sources:
- www.thebutterflysite.com
- www.thoughtco.com
