Top 10 Rarest Butterflies in the World
00:18 Blue Morpho
With a 5.5 inch wingspan, this big, gorgeous sapphire blue butterfly is native to the rainforests of Central and South America. Both males and females have iridescent blue wings, though the wings of the females are edged in brown and have white spots. The undersides of the wings are brown with orange eyespots outlined in bronze and brown, and the wings of the females have a broken bronze band.
Island Marble Butterfly
This butterfly is endemic to Washington state’s San Juan Islands. Once believed to be extinct, it was found in 1998 and has been listed as endangered since 2020. It’s a subspecies of a butterfly called the Large Marble.
The Island Marble’s wings have a fascinating color scheme of marbled green and white, and it feeds on the flowers of the wild mustard. It has a wingspan of between 1.5 and 2 inches, and the caterpillar is about 3/4 of an inch long. It’s green or blue-gray and dotted in black with white with yellow stripes down its back and sides.
01:26 Schaus Swallowtail
Native to southern Florida down into the Caribbean, this swallowtail has a 3.25 to 3.75-inch wingspan and has blackish-brown wings with yellow markings. The underside of the hindwings has a rust-colored patch decorated with powdery blue blotches. The females and males can be told apart because the female has all black antennae while the male’s are black and tipped with yellow. The butterfly is famous for being able to fly great distances, which means that it can hop from one of the Florida keys to the other.
03:14 Kaiser-i-Hind
Also called the Emperor of India, this butterfly is found in the eastern Himalayan mountains and is unmistakable because it is largely a lush, grass green. Scientists are still trying to puzzle out how the scales on the wings produce such a vivid color. Males can be told from females because they’re smaller than females and have a yellow patch on the hind wing. The female also has more tails on her hindwing, and she’s a bit duskier. The caterpillar eats the leaves of Daphne shrubs.
03:36 Zebra Longwing
The coloration of this butterfly reminds people of the black and white stripes of a zebra even though if you look closely there are red spots at the base of the wings, which have a span of 2.8 to 3.9 inches. It is native to South and Central America and can be found in some parts of the southern United States. This makes its range unusually large for a butterfly. The zebra longwing roosts in large groups to protect against predators. Moreover, they are unusual for butterflies in that they eat pollen, and their bodies transform it into chemicals that make the butterfly toxic. Not only this, the ingestion of pollen makes the zebra longwing live much longer than other butterflies.
04:51 Chimaera Birdwing
This large and sensationally colorful butterfly is found in the mountains of New Guinea. The male is brilliant green and yellow, with splashes of black. The female, who’s bigger than the male, is dark brown with white spots on her forewings. Her hindwings are mostly white and spotted with black. The wingspan of the Chimaera birdwing is 2.76 to 5.9 inches in males and 3.15 to 7.09 inches in females.
05:56 Bhutan Glory
The Bhutan glory is a swallowtail butterfly, but it’s unusual in that its forewings are oval-shaped. The edge of the wing that’s farthest from the body is convex, and the hindwings have many tails. The overall color of this butterfly is black, but it is adorned with wavy white or cream vertical lines.
05:52 Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing
Named after a Queen of England, the females of this huge butterfly can have a wingspan of between 9.8 and 11 inches and weigh as much as 0.42 ounces. Their wings are brown and white, but the smaller males are sparkling blue-green and banded in black, with a green or blue-green underside. This butterfly is only found in Papua New Guinea’s Oro Province
07:22 Miami Blue
The Miami blue has a wingspan of only 0.87 to a little over an inch. The wings, as its name says, are bright blue in the males, while they are gray with a bit of blue near the base in the females. The hind wings are edged in white and have four spots. The butterfly chooses several types of plants as host plants for its caterpillar, including blackbeads, nickerbeads, peacock flowers, and balloon vines.
09:28 Palos Verdes Blue
This little butterfly with its cerulean blue wings and body is in competition with the Miami blue to be the rarest butterfly in the world. A subspecies of the silvery blue, it is found in California’s Palos Verdes Peninsula. One reason for its endangered status is that it uses only the common deer weed as a host plant, and this plant has become scarce as its habitat is being converted into housing. Because of this, homeowners in the area are encouraged to plant deer weed.
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