With a small handful of exceptions, all insects begin life as an egg. Once they hatch, they go through several stages of physical development in their lifetime. The physiological changes that occur and differentiate one stage of an insect’s life from another is called metamorphosis. While some insect species go […]
The swallowtail butterfly is a name for a number of species of butterfly that fall under the family Papilionidae. There are over 550 different species of swallowtail and they exist on every continent except for Antarctica. These beautiful, colorful, and surprisingly durable insects have been observed living in even the […]
The life of a butterfly is hard. Sometimes it is too cold to go out and other times it is too hot. Still other times there is not enough to eat or drink around. Luckily, butterflies have evolved some tricks to survive these periods of adverse weather and food/water shortages. […]
Most people are familiar with many kinds of butterfly, The wings of butterflies are often their most distinguishing feature and come in many different shapes, colors, textures, and patterns. But, do you know how a butterfly wing works, or what it is made out of? Butterfly wings do more than […]
Eleanor Lutz is a designer in Seattle who has a molecular biology degree and used to work in a mosquito lab. Now she creates incredible science info graphics, that are often animated. Her latest work caught my attentions showing some of the butterflies of North America. Imagine if I could […]
I developed a new technique of removing the scales of butterfly wings to reveal the amazing architecture that lies underneath. Check out these first pictures of “Skeletonized Butterflies“.
Caterpillars grow to about 27,000 times the size it was when it first emerged from its egg. If a human baby weighed 9 pounds at birth and grew at the same rate as a caterpillar, it would weigh 243,000 pounds when fully grown!