Dying

I spotted this delias butterfly sitting on a banana leaf at about eye level. These butterflies are incredibly hard to get an image of, as they are generally high up in the canopy and when they actually come down to a reachable level, they are difficult to approach. With absolute stealth, to my surprise, I was able to approach this one.

I took a few snaps and realized that this butterfly was not looking well, kind of flopped onto the leaf. Her proboscis was flexing so she was definitely alive. I decided to take advantage of the situation and move in for some macro work. When I pulled up the proboscis macro on my viewer, everything started to make sense.

When butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, the proboscis is in two coils. The first job of the imago is to zip the two proboscis parts together. Failure to successfully complete this step leaves the butterfly unable to feed. Unfortunately she had woefully failed and was literally starving to death. This diagnosis was confirmed by the fact that otherwise, this butterfly was in perfect condition and obviously only very recently emerged.

Such a real shame, but as I demonstrated with yesterday’s blip, nature can be so cruel.

Identification - Delias belisama belisama.

Dave