The above picture was send to me through an e-mail. Below is some data I manage to get from internet about this wonderful butterfly.
Physical and Behavioral Characteristics
- Glasswing butterfly's wing are transparent. Its biological name is Greta oto.
- The opaque borders of its wings are dark brown sometimes tinted with red or orange, and its body is dark in color. Its wingspan is between 5.5 and 6 cm.
- Its abundantly found in in the amazon rain forest (South America).
- It feed on the nectar of a variety of tropical flowers.
- It lays eggs on plants of the tropical nightshade (a poisonous flowering plant). The red and purple striped caterpillars feed on these toxic plants and store the alkaloids in their tissues, making them distasteful to predators such as birds.They retain their toxicity in adulthood. The same alkaloids that make them poisonous also are converted into pheromones by the males, which use them to attract females.
- These butterflies has long migrations and their males gather for the purposes of competitive mating display.
- Greta oto in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasswing_butterfly
- Transparent Butterfly in http://www.photopumpkin.com/photo-blog/transparent-butterfly/
