Four, Not Three or Two - _TNY_9080
This shot is a good one for illustrating that butterflies have four wings and not two. Since they overlap each other, a lot of people aren't aware, but here, with a butterfly on the corrugated plastic in the ceiling (or should that be roof?) a the Haga Ocean butterfly house, the light passes through the wings in a way that make it clear that there are four of them.
The species here is called the king swallowtail (Papilio thoas) and for that, the number four is also important. You see, there is a *very* similar species known as the giant swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) but you can tell them apart by counting the number of yellow spots along the trailing edge of the forewings as P. crephontes has three spots while P. thoas here have, that's right, four of them.
Four, Not Three or Two - _TNY_9080
This shot is a good one for illustrating that butterflies have four wings and not two. Since they overlap each other, a lot of people aren't aware, but here, with a butterfly on the corrugated plastic in the ceiling (or should that be roof?) a the Haga Ocean butterfly house, the light passes through the wings in a way that make it clear that there are four of them.
The species here is called the king swallowtail (Papilio thoas) and for that, the number four is also important. You see, there is a *very* similar species known as the giant swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) but you can tell them apart by counting the number of yellow spots along the trailing edge of the forewings as P. crephontes has three spots while P. thoas here have, that's right, four of them.