Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine.

— Jeffrey Glassberg

Colours, butterflies and nature — all things interrelated — have always fascinated me. Recently when I got a chance to visit Fort Lauderdale — a city in Florida, US, on the Atlantic coast, 37km north of Miami — abandoning the temptation that beaches offer, I decided to spend my first weekend with countless butterflies in the Butterfly World Museum.

Though not a breath-taking attraction as is portrayed in their advertisement, the museum is still worth a visit. The Butterfly World Museum — as the name suggests — is a botanical garden and, according to the museum’s management, the garden is home to 150 species of butterflies — and you would observe at least 50 species if not all, at any time of the year. The garden is also a habitat of various humming birds.

Located inside Tradewinds Park at Sample Road, Coconut Creek, the museum is opened seven days a week and you can get the direction of the museum from their website http://www.butterflyworld.com.

The museum is claimed to be the largest butterfly facility in the world and has a research centre too, where butterflies are bred.

With plenty of butterflies around, it’s an ideal place for photography so don’t forget to bring your camera as you will find many different species to shoot — archaeoprepona demophon, argema mittrei, atala, biblis hyperia, blue morpho, blue pansy, caligo idomenius, cassius blue, dolpha evelina, heliconius sapho, morpho banded, queen and troides helena to name a few. However, how good the photographs turn out is a test of your skills as a photographer. Shooting these little beauties as they flutter around isn’t easy. At least I didn’t find it easy! So many times when I set my focus and was about to click, the butterfly flew and I had to look for another one to get a decent shot.

Don’t forget to shoot a video as well because when walking through the garden, the butterflies will land on you. In addition, the fountains and waterfall add beauty to the surroundings so just ‘still’ photos won’t be enough. You would want to take with you some ‘moving’ memories too!

And a caution for kids – no matter how excited you feel, please don’t try to catch the butterflies, just enjoy that beautiful sight.

The museum also hosts a monthly workshop for butterfly gardening. The workshops are designed to guide the attendants to develop their own butterfly garden and cover various aspects of butterfly breeding, such as identifying local butterflies and choosing plants that most likely attract butterflies. The workshop is free to attend once you have paid the admission fee to the museum.

There is also a souvenir shop inside the museum building where you will find everything with a ‘butterfly theme’ — costumes, handicrafts, books, showpieces, etc. But like all souvenir shops, this one too is very expensive so your will be better off window shopping than actually shopping.

The museum is an ideal place for school’s educational trips as children can get to know all about butterflies’ life cycle by actually witnessing them at their natural habitat instead of just reading about it in textbooks. And this, in fact, can be a wonderful suggestion for our local cities and schools as well. There are various parks now in cities and towns and a thought should be given to the development of butterfly parks by both city or even administrations.

Yes, you can suggest to your school’s administration that a small butterfly museum can be built just like they set up computer, chemistry and physics labs — and students can study about this colourful creature and enjoy the marvels of nature right here in Pakistan.

Some quick facts

Life cycle

A butterfly’s lifecycle is made up of four parts, egg, larva (caterpillars), pupa (chrysalis) and adult.

Butterflies attach their eggs to leaves with a special glue.

Most caterpillars are plant eaters (herbivores).

Fully grown caterpillars attach themselves to a suitable twig or leaf before shedding their outside layer of skin to reveal a hard skin underneath known as a chrysalis.

An adult butterfly will eventually emerge from the chrysalis where it will wait a few hours for its wings to fill with blood and dry, before flying for the first time.

Butterflies can live in the adult stage from anywhere between a week and a year, depending on the species.

Butterflies often have brightly coloured wings with unique patterns made up of tiny scales.

Most butterflies feed on nectar from flowers.

Butterflies have taste receptors on their feet.

Scientists estimate that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 different species of butterfly.

Migration

Monarch butterflies are known for their long migration. Every year monarch butterflies will travel a great distance (sometimes over 4,000 miles), females will lay eggs and a new generation of monarchs will travel back, completing the cycle.

Some monarchs migrate over 2,000 miles, flying from Canada to central Mexico in the fall.

Largest and smallest

The largest butterfly in the world is the female Queen Alexandra bird wing butterfly (Ornithoptera Alexandrae). It lives in New Guinea, Indonesia and has a wingspan up to 12 1/2 inches; the male is much smaller than the female.

The goliath bird wing butterfly is the second-largest butterfly in the world. It lives in Indonesian rainforests and has a wingspan up to 11 inches.

The Atlas moth (Attacus atlas) which has a wingspan of one foot (30cm) is the largest moth.

The western pygmy blue (brephidium exilis) with a wingspan of 0.62 inch (1.5cm) is the smallest butterfly.

The nepticulid moth which is 0.1 inch long is the smallest moth.

Speed

The hawk moths (family sphingidae), which can fly up to 31 mph are the fastest fliers. The speed varies among butterfly species — the poisonous varieties are slower than non-poisonous varieties. The fastest butterflies (some skippers) can fly at about 30 mile per hour or faster. Slow flying butterflies fly about five mph.

Defence mechanism

Some caterpillars are poisonous to predators. These caterpillars get their toxicity from the plants they eat. Generally, the brightly coloured larvae are poisonous; their colour is a reminder to predators about their toxicity. Some poisonous caterpillars include the monarch and the pipevine swallowtail.

Some caterpillars blend into their surroundings extraordinarily well. Many are a shade of green that matches their host plant. Others look like inedible objects, like bird droppings (the young tiger swallowtail larva). Some butterflies look like dead leaves (like the Indian leaf butterfly), others look like the bark of a tree (e.g., the carpenter moth).

Some caterpillars have eyespots that make them look like a bigger, more dangerous animal, like a snake. An eye spot is a circular, eye-like marking found on the body of some caterpillars. These eyespots make the insect look like the face of a much larger animal and may scare away some predators.

Sources: www.sciencekids.co.nz

butterflywings.wikispaces.com

www.enchantedlearning.com