Sorta Old Beauty - _TNY_6402
Life as a tropical butterfly is a bit different to the ones living up here in Sweden.
For starters, there is no winter where everything is frozen so there is no need to adapt the life cycle to hibernate through the cold months.
This allows butterflies like this banded blue morpho (Morpho achilles) to have a life cycle of 115 days. This is not to say that the adult butterfly lives that long, but rather that after the egg is laid, it takes around two weeks to hatch.
They then live as caterpillars, eating and eating and eating for about eight weeks befor forming a chrysalis and enter the pupae stage.
They stay in there for about two more weeks before emerging as an adult!
They only live as adults for two or three weeks during which time they need to find a partner and mate and lay their own eggs - and start the cycle over again.
This Achilles blue morpho looks old and worn, and it is - but old in a morpho butterfly perspective means you hatched around three weeks ago.
Sorta Old Beauty - _TNY_6402
Life as a tropical butterfly is a bit different to the ones living up here in Sweden.
For starters, there is no winter where everything is frozen so there is no need to adapt the life cycle to hibernate through the cold months.
This allows butterflies like this banded blue morpho (Morpho achilles) to have a life cycle of 115 days. This is not to say that the adult butterfly lives that long, but rather that after the egg is laid, it takes around two weeks to hatch.
They then live as caterpillars, eating and eating and eating for about eight weeks befor forming a chrysalis and enter the pupae stage.
They stay in there for about two more weeks before emerging as an adult!
They only live as adults for two or three weeks during which time they need to find a partner and mate and lay their own eggs - and start the cycle over again.
This Achilles blue morpho looks old and worn, and it is - but old in a morpho butterfly perspective means you hatched around three weeks ago.