A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Morpho menelaus
Wingspan: 5 - 8 inches (12 - 20 cm) Coloring: Top of wings are bright blue, edged with black. Underside is a dull brown color with many eyespots, providing camouflage against predators when its wings are closed. Males’ wings are broader than those of the females and appear to be brighter in color. When the blue morpho flies, the contrasting bright blue and dull brown colors flash, making it look like the morpho is appearing and disappearing. (Info from www.rainforest-alliance.org/kids/species...)
Tropical forests of Latin America from Mexico to Colombia. Adults spend most of their time on the forest floor and in the lower shrubs and trees of the understory with their wings folded. However, when looking for mates, the blue morpho will fly through all layers of the forest. Caterpillar eats leaves of many varieties, but prefers to dine on plants in the pea family. Adult eats the juice of rotting fruit, the fluids of decomposing animals, tree sap, fungi and wet mud. Blue morphos are severely threatened by deforestation of tropical forests and habitat fragmentation. Humans provide a direct threat to this spectacular creature because their beauty attracts artists and collectors from all over the globe who wish to capture and display them. (www.rainforest-alliance.org/kids/species...)
These ones were not actually found in the wild, but in a place called "The butterfly house." in Key West, Florida, where you can go to learn about butterflies, as well as go into a greenhouse-like habitat they set up where you can see the butterflies as they fly all around you. Blue morpho was just one of many species they had. I was able to get some beautiful pictures, and even had one land on my arm, which is considered good luck! I was just excited to be so close to one!
Spotted on Feb 7, 2009
Submitted on Jan 17, 2012
11 Comments
Working on it :) I'm digging around to see if I have any other photos to add to the spotting besides the one... hmmm...
And now we wanna see your Caligo!!
Thanks Curator of Good, SanjaySaklani, MelissaFerguson, and lgCostaNut!! :) It's even better now that I was able to get my main photo back up... (for awhile it was bugging out and wouldn't show up)
And @Bayucca ... You were correct that my last photo was of the wrong species. I used to have five photos on this spotting and the last one was a Caligo. I didn't pay close enough attention when I was uploading the photos the first time. Thanks for pointing out the mistake! :)
You can't have a color blue mission without a morpho!!! Great spotting
Bayucca.. no need to apologies and feel so sorry... we gather here to collect reality of life on this beautiful planet. Hope you understand meaning of Project Noah and share your knowledge with us. Thanks for comment, sharing knowledge is learning for every new user and encourage everyone to share information that help everyone to document facts of every Organism. For me also many suggestions are proved wrong then I start collect information in correct suggestion to get learnt about that Organism. I find many websites had wrong IDs with pictures and no one can correct them.
I apologize the confusion about my comment! I agree they are all the same one (now). I can't imagine that I mixed-up the ventral view of Caligo and Morpho, when I posted my comment, since they are extremely different. I guess that Michaela changed the additional post with the correct one and you referred your comments to the changed post.
@Ashish: Usually I add the corresponding links to suggestions, but sometimes I have not the time for looking at some good links or just forgot it. I usually only correct or make any ID suggestions when I am pretty or 100% sure (as in this case). But this time I obviously forgot it. Sorry!
Beautiful!
A Blue...tiful spotting, Dear Bayucca its the dorsal and ventral view of same insect its not a different one. follow the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Morpho... to get it clear
Beautiful spotting
Hi Bayucca always mark a reference link while making correcting suggestion. Please share right information with reference link. This way users get correct specie identification knowledge.
The last one is not a Morpho but a Caligo, Caligo telamonius memnon. Please, separate them.