Apollo Butterfly

Facts about Apollo Butterfly, "Scientific name for Apollo Butterfly is Parnassius apollo" Apollo Butterfly is a Parnassius type butterfly that comes from the Papilionidae family. These butterflies are largely found all through Europe, as well as Fennoscandia, and in the central parts of Asia. The Apollo butterfly usually lives in pastures and mountain meadows, at a maximum height of 2,000 meters (6560 feet)above sea level, where they can feed on the abundance of nectar-offering flowers. The caterpillars of the Apollo Butterfly feed on stonecrop and houseleek plants that grown on infertile rock-strewn outcrops or gravel.

Features

The Apollo butterfly is a gorgeous white color butterfly, with a wingspan, ranging from 2 9/32 to 3 5/16 inches (7 cm to 8.4 cm). The Apollo Butterfly are adorned with large black color spots on their forewings and red color eye-spots on their hind wings. These outstanding red eye-spots can differ in size and form, according to the place of the Apollo butterfly. The brilliant red color of the butterfly often becomes paler in the sun, making the eye-spots of older butterflies to emerge more orange in color. The wings of these butterflies are glossy, with somewhat see-through edges, and some butterflies are melanistic, which is a common phenomenon in several butterflies.

There is a slight sexual difference between the male and the female Apollo butterfly. The male Apollo butterfly has a forewing length of 2.9 cm (1 1/8 inch), whereas the female ones have a forewing length of 3.4 cm (1 5/16 inches). The female Apollo Butterfly has broad, luminous orange patches on their upper back wing and the male Apollo Butterfly has a curved yellow-orange color line of markings. Both the front wings and back wings are fine white with shadowy black color markings and a line of black colored, crescent-shaped markings beautify the border of the back wing.

The Apollo butterfly has long been valued by butterfly collectors, who aim to have as several of the variants as they can. As excess-collecting of the Apollo Butterfly is supposed to have caused their numbers to decline in a few regions, such as in Italy and Spain, home change is considered to be a far more considerable threat to the survival of these butterflies. Cultivated areas of conifers, the sequence of suitable home to scrubland, cultivation, and urbanization have all abridged the home of the Apollo butterfly. Weather change and acid rainfall have also been concerned with this variety turn down in Fennoscandia. Additionally, automobiles have been one of the causes of the mortalities of Apollo butterfly.

Diet

Mature Apollo butterflies are largely found on the wing in midsummer, and they feed on the on the nectar formed by the flowers. The caterpillars of the Apollo Butterfly feed on stonecrop and houseleek plants.

Behavior

There is a difference in behavior of male and female Apollo butterflies. As the female butterflies flutter near to the ground about the food plants, settling on thistles or stones to rest and assuming flight at the slightest trouble, the male Apollo Butterfly are more active than the female butterflies and are inclined to fly up and down the vertical slopes, towering about a meter over the ground.

Breeding

The female Apollo butterfly lays her eggs during the winter season and the eggs will hatch during the spring season of the following year. The caterpillars of the Apollo Butterfly species have a velvety black color body, with orange-red spots down the sides. When the caterpillar is fully-developed, it will pupate on the earth, shaping a loose cocoon from which the mature butterfly comes out subsequent to metamorphosis.

Apollo Butterfly are insects. A Apollo Butterfly is a herbivore; Meaning that as a caterpillar its first food is its own eggshell and than it will eat the leaves of the plant on which it is hatched. When it becomes a butterfly, it will feed mostly on nectar from flowers, rotting fruit and water with a "proboscis" - a long narrow tube in their mouth that looks like a straw.

Life cycle of a Apollo Butterfly comes in four stages, egg, larva "caterpillars", pupa "chrysalis" and adult Butterfly.
A Apollo Butterfly will attach its eggs to leaves with a special glue.

When Apollo caterpillars become fully grown they will attach to an appropriate leaf or small branch, than they will shed the outside layer of their skin and a hard skin underneath known as a "chrysalis" will be their new look
An adult Apollo Butterfly will come out from the "chrysalis" than it waits a few hours for its wings to dry and fill with blood, before it takes its first flight.

Apollo Butterfly can see yellow, green, and red. An adult butterfly average life span is from a week to a year
The top flight speed of a Apollo Butterfly is 12 miles per hour (19 Km/ph) and some moths can fly up to 25 miles per hour (40 Km/ph).
A Apollo Butterfly is cold-blooded, which means the body temperature is not regulated on its own. A Butterfly can't fly or eat if their body temperature is below 82 degrees fah (28 cel). Butterfly's are often basking in the sun with their wings open to gain heat and than the veins in the wings carry the heat to the body.
A Apollo Butterfly has sense organ, on their feet or tarsi, for tasting
The estimate is between 15000 and 20000 different species of butterfly.

A Apollo Butterfly has a small body, made up of three parts – the head, abdomen and thorax. A Apollo Butterfly has two large eyes, which are made up of many small parts which are called "compound eyes".
A Apollo Butterfly has two antenna's on the top of their heads, which they use to smell, hear and feel. A Apollo Butterfly mouth is a long tube a "proboscis" - a long narrow tube in their mouth that looks like a straw when its done eating, it rolls the tube back up.

A Apollo Butterfly has three pairs of legs and their feet have little claws that help them stand on flowers. The Apollo Butterfly wings are made up of hard tubes that are covered with a thin tissue. The butterfly's wings are covered with fine dusty like scales. A Apollo Butterfly has four brightly colored wings having distinctive patterns made up of tiny scales. The bright patterns scales sometimes have hidden ultraviolet patterns for attracting mates. The bright colors are also used as camouflage to hide them or scare off predictors.