Agree, butterfly love , regardless of who you are – an expert lepidopterist, or ordinary citizen of the metropolis… They are often compared to flowers, and to them, in contrast to other insects, people have formed very friendly relations.
Someone pays attention to the color, the form, and someone at the size…
Butterfly with huge wings
Butterfly : Saturnia-Atakus
In the tropical forests of Asia lives Saturnia-Otakus, which many collectors considered the world’s largest butterfly. This kind of really huge wings, however, it is at the expense of the latter there are many disputes. The fact that the researchers were constantly added to them another centimeter, their sizes ultimately came giperplazirovannah, to incredible 30-32 cm in wingspan!
How to measure the size of butterflies?
Why did this happen? On the one hand, someone wanted to impress the reader with the butterflies, “a little”, adding size, and on the other hand, these data were the result of the method of straightening the wings of a butterfly for your collection. The wingspan of “dried” butterflies from the collections depends on the angle of their straightening – the more negative the angle between the edge of the front wing and rear wings, the greater the wingspan instance (of course, not indefinitely). This little trick is often used by enterprising collectors to sell at a profit their available butterfly, with wingspan …
How to actually set the size of butterfly wings? The most compelling and reliable method is trigonometric calculation example, the height of the triangle. So, the length of the line from the base front edge to the top front of the wing multiplied by the sine of the angle which this line forms with the axis of the body of the butterfly, and get the length of one wing. Doubling it – get the length of the wingspan of the butterfly! According to this method, most of the fixed wingspan Saturnia-Atakus is 26.2 cm.
On the opposite side of the planet – the Amazon rainforest, – Saturnia are also common and they also affect its size, though still inferior to South Asian. For example, at Saturnia-Saturnia Arsenale and Cayo in the span of the wings reach 19 cm!
The largest butterfly in the Western hemisphere
Thysania Agrippina
A real giant and the largest butterfly in the Western hemisphere is Thysania Agrippina. This species is considered by many to be the largest in the world, although the wingspan is only 25-26 cm, which is comparable to Saturnia-Otakus, but the last area of the wings more clearly. On the contrary, Thysania Agrippina has a very inconspicuous and the speckled camouflage colouring – grey with a thick black lace stripes.
The biggest butterfly in the world
Queen Alexandra’s birdwing
The biggest butterfly in the world is officially sailing ship – Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing from the forest of Papua New Guinea, this species has a wingspan of 28-29 cm! He belongs to a very rare sight, after all, is endemic to New Guinea and now on the verge of extinction. The international conventions is prohibited not only trade, but also catching these rare insects. Females Sailboats-Prickwillow Alexandra considerably exceed males in size – if the first wingspan up to 28 cm, and the other 19 cm.
They differ also in colour. In females the wings are colored with coffee shade and numerous cream and light brown radial stripes. Coloration of males is much brighter and more attractive – with a predominance of metallic green, sometimes blue and yellow with black longitudinal stripes.
The arguments over the maximum size of the wingspan of the butterflies, and if you take the average data, each species demonstrates a much modest rates, than that would be collectors.
