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Project Noah Nature School
Papilio glaucus
(Papilio glaucus) This was a very large yellow and black winged butterfly appears to be a female.
This butterfly was very attracted to the blue "Superman" shirt. We had been working on a project outside, sweating profusely for hours on a very hot and dry June day. We needed to wet the sand down and had the hose on mist. This spraying water attracted several butterflies. It landed on his shirt and remained there for about half an hour. It was either resting or possibly feeding on the salts/sweat in the cotton blue shirt? When it was time to get back to work, we placed it on a branch, but it flew back onto the blue shirt. So we waited and made sure not to hurt it as we did tasks that required little movement until it finally flew off.
Spotted on Jun 24, 2010
Submitted on May 26, 2011
3 Comments
That is what we figured this was attracted to. I've worn blue shirts outside before and has the butterflies fly up to me to investigate. They have blue on their tails and blue must be a color they are attracted to!
How funny! I regularly have hackberry emperor butterflies land on me when I am doing yard work. They are attracted by the salts on skin.
Interesting story!