Is the peacock butterfly nocturnal or daytime? What is the difference?

The characteristic spots that stand out brightly on the wings of the butterfly really resemble the eyes of a bird of paradise. If you abstract it, you get the impression of a gaze. So the exotic name fully corresponds to the appearance of these representatives of nymphalids. Relatives of the peacock eye also include urticaria, mother of pearl and checkerwort. It should be noted that in the animal world, peacock butterflies are represented by several species. However, when people talk about them, they usually mean the daytime peacock eye.

Types of insects of the family and their differences

The peacock butterfly is divided into 18 subfamilies. A prominent representative is considered to be a species called chocolate. Her wings are colored shades of brown with blue eyes. The Saturnia butterfly stands out for its size and characteristic shaggy antennae. The blue-eyed butterfly is the most recognizable among the sisters. The wings are painted bright orange, large blue eyes are surrounded by a golden halo.

You can distinguish one species from another by how many eyes the butterfly has. The second difference is the period of wakefulness. The diurnal peacock eye collects nectar from sunrise to sunset. The night one differs from its brother in its discreet appearance. Begins activity at sunset.

Peacock butterfly

What does the peacock have to do with it?

If you now say that you have never met this butterfly, then I assure you, you are mistaken! You've certainly seen this bright orange miracle swinging on the yellow coltsfoot flowers. It is this beauty in the forefront, among other insects, that brings summer on its wings, which is approaching by leaps and bounds.

Do you remember that you often met this? Yes, sure! It is everywhere: in parks, and in gardens, and in the forest and in the vegetable garden. It’s just that not everyone knows that it’s called that. So what does the bushy-tailed peacock have to do with it then? Everything ingenious is simple.

Has anyone looked at a peacock feather? Its tip is topped with a beautiful iridescent blue-red-yellow-orange-green spot called the eye.

So, our butterfly’s wings were also decorated with spots, similar in description and appearance to those of a peacock. That's why they called her that.

Moreover, flyers come in not only orange shades. Cherry-red clothes with eyes look especially impressive.

Lifespan

In his treatise “All About Butterflies,” the French naturalist Jean Henri Fabre described the full cycle of metamorphosis and determined how long the peacock butterfly lives. When asked how long they live, he answered - up to 9 months.

The duration is affected by:

how a butterfly winters;
what subspecies it belongs to;
what is the temperature and climate of the region;
how nutritious the plants were.

On average, peacock butterflies live for 7 months. This time is enough to mature and lay eggs.

Life cycle

The life of a peacock eye consists of several cycles:

Egg.
Caterpillar.
Doll.
Butterfly.

The peacock eye is a
migratory insect species
that travels long distances. It flutters above the ground exclusively during daylight hours. With the onset of cold weather, it flies to places with more humid and cooler climatic conditions. The moth settles in forest bark or steppe litter.

A butterfly of this species settles down to spend the winter in a secluded, cool place, where it will be comfortable in its pupal state. If she chooses to spend the winter in a warm room, then she will have little chance of surviving the cold. A warmer temperature than it needs provokes an accelerated metabolism, which results in rapid aging.

External differences between a male and a female

The front wing is up to 27-31 cm longer than the hind wing. The swing can reach 62-70 mm. The red-brown field of the wing is covered with complex patterns. Large bright spots are considered a distinctive feature; a description of the eyes helps to identify the subspecies.

What a male peacock butterfly looks like can be easily determined by the size of the upper wing. It is more elongated and larger. In females, the upper and lower parts are rounded and equal in size.

A striking example of such differences is the night peacock's eye - a butterfly, the photo of which is striking in size, has a highly elongated wing edge. This is a trait of males.

Peacock butterfly

Butterfly: description and photo. The structure and appearance of butterflies

The structure of the butterfly has two main sections: the body, protected by a hard chitinous shell, and the wings.

A butterfly is an insect whose body consists of:

Head, inactively connected to the chest. The butterfly's head has a round shape with a slightly flattened occipital part. The round or oval convex eyes of the butterfly in the form of hemispheres, occupying most of the lateral surface of the head, have a complex facet structure. Butterflies have color vision and perceive moving objects better than stationary ones. In many species, additional simple parietal eyes are located behind the antennae. The structure of the oral apparatus depends on the species and can be of the sucking or gnawing type.

Breasts with a three-segment structure. The front part is significantly smaller than the middle and back part, where three pairs of legs are located, which have a structure characteristic of insects. On the shins of the butterfly's front legs there are spurs designed to maintain the hygiene of the antennae.
The abdomen has the shape of an elongated cylinder, consisting of ten ring-shaped segments with spiracles located on them.

Butterfly structure

The antennae of the butterfly are located on the border of the parietal and frontal parts of the head. They help butterflies navigate their surroundings by sensing air vibrations and various odors.

The length and structure of the antennae depend on the species.

Two pairs of butterfly wings, covered with flat scales of different shapes, have a membranous structure and are penetrated by transverse and longitudinal veins. The size of the hind wings can be the same as the front wings or significantly smaller than them. The pattern of butterfly wings varies from species to species and captivates with its beauty.

In macro photography, the scales on the wings of butterflies are very clearly visible - they can have completely different shapes and colors.

Butterfly wings – macro photography

The appearance and color of the butterfly’s wings serve not only for intraspecific sexual recognition, but also act as protective camouflage, allowing it to blend into its surroundings. Therefore, colors can be either monochrome or variegated with a complex pattern.

The size of a butterfly, or better said, the wingspan of a butterfly, can range from 2 mm to 31 cm.

Wintering and migration of Lepidoptera

It is interesting to watch how butterflies hibernate. A protective cocoon of threads is formed around the pupa. It protects the contents from cold and moisture.

Ventilated areas under roofs and in cracks in tree bark serve as wintering sites. Inner instinct drives the insect thousands of kilometers to find optimal humidity and temperature conditions.

According to the notes of naturalists, the daytime peacock butterfly migrates to zones with a temperate climate. The migration begins in September; in the southern regions it falls in October.

Diet

As for the nutrition of caterpillars, it should be noted that they are omnivorous, i.e. Any plant food is used. But still in first place are the following plants: nettle, hops and raspberries; on the second - willow and hemp. The favorite food of adult butterflies is nectar. They find it in thyme, burdock, thistle, scabiosis and flowers in the garden. In search of life-giving moisture, they sit on wet soil and feed on plant sap, which appears on the bark from time to time.

Is the insect in the Red Book?

The small nocturnal peacock is listed in the Red Book of Ukraine, a butterfly whose photo is mesmerizing in its beauty, but is being replaced by deforestation. The zones in which it provides itself with a nutritional base and protection disappear.

The small and large eye butterfly is included in the Red Book of Russia. Both species have become rare due to agricultural activities, climate change and increased pollution. The insect suffers from man-made emissions because it is susceptible to the percentage of heavy metals in the food supply.

They sleep all winter

Lemongrass, burdock, daytime cat's eye

- these are those types of butterflies that, in the cold season, wrap themselves in their wings, like in a blanket, and sleep all winter.
Some of them hide in tree hollows, some even in houses. They find somewhere a secluded place
under the roof of a house or even behind the stove and wait for the first warm days. With the arrival of spring, they wake up, straighten their wings and flutter around. They live only in summer.

For example, the most popular butterfly in Russia is the cabbage butterfly.

.
After a butterfly
in the form in which we are accustomed to seeing it, it lives for about 20 days.
Over the entire summer period, several generations of cabbage butterflies can be seen.
But despite the fact that butterflies have such a short life, these amazing insects have a long and amazing journey. They are reborn several times, transformed and transformed.

House conditions

Let's look at how to care for a butterfly at home. Owners of orange beauties willingly share detailed guides: what to feed the butterfly, how to maintain and care for it.

For breeding you will need an aquarium with a gauze lid. A 2 cm layer of soil is laid out at the bottom. It is recommended to give preference to soil from a pet store. It is treated against fungus and mold.

What to feed butterflies depends on the species. To know what they eat at home, pay attention to the plants in the area where the caterpillar was caught. The caterpillar caught by the peacock's eye takes home along with the young branches of the trees. The branches stick into the soil, creating the illusion of a forest. How long caterpillars live depends on the species. In the peacock eye, they pupate after 1.5 months. In the daytime peacock's eye - up to 1 month.

Butterflies at home hatch in 1-2 months. During the process of opening the cocoon, it is important to keep track of how many wings the butterfly has. If not all are revealed, she will quickly die. The house butterfly loves light, partial shade and fresh air. Live flowering plants are placed in the enclosure to feed them throughout the summer. Life expectancy at home is 5-8 months.

Features of reproduction

The breeding process occurs once a year for butterflies in the north, twice a year for butterflies in the south. At the end of April they lay several hundred eggs. To do this, they most often use the underside of a nettle leaf .

In May, black hairy larvae appear, covered with spines and small white dots. They live in a common nest made of leaves on plants, which are entwined with the silky threads they produce. They feed on herbs.

In July, the caterpillars crawl away and live separately. Around September, they develop into pupae that hang upside down on plants or fences and walls. They look angular, have a dark color from gray-green to brown and a golden tint, and have two rows of shiny spines. And after 1-2 weeks, the transformation into adult insects occurs.

Appearance of the caterpillar

The peacock eye larva is a black caterpillar similar to. It is very beautiful and interesting. There are long, needle-like processes all over the body. The body appears to be covered with numerous pimples. The color does not give away its parents - multi-colored, bright moths with a predominance of red shades.

The peacock eye caterpillar has a head, abdomen, and chest. The oral apparatus and digestive system are well developed, providing almost continuous nutrition. Due to this, the peacock eye caterpillar grows quickly.

It is born miniature - about 1 mm. During the entire development cycle - from 4 to 6 weeks, it molts four times. Constantly increasing in size. Food is not visible through the durable black chitinous cover, which is typical for other larvae of butterflies and moths. On the inside of the body there are legs that allow peacock eye caterpillars to crawl along tree bark and leaves.

The peacock eye caterpillar is pictured below.

Butterfly world

Representatives of the order Lepidoptera, which includes butterflies according to the biological hierarchy, can be found on almost all continents and in any climate, except the coldest - Antarctica. They love to fly in flowering meadows in mid-latitudes and among the ice of Greenland, on the islands of the Pacific Ocean and in the highlands of the Himalayas.

Butterflies belong to the most numerous and ancient order, which has more than 158 thousand species. Lepidoptera are cold-blooded (ectothermic) insects that can regulate their own body temperature by taking heat from the outside or releasing it into the environment. Because of this, most of their species prefer to live in tropical climates.

A butterfly is called an insect with complete metamorphosis, i.e. its development goes through all stages: eggs, larvae or caterpillars to pupa and adult (imago). Also, for most lepidopterans, a characteristic feature of their body structure is the presence of a mouthparts with a proboscis, through which they drink nectar. They also have a wide variety of wing shapes and sizes: from 2 mm to 28 cm.

Where the butterfly lives, what it eats and its lifespan most often depend on the climate zone: these insects prefer a hot and humid natural climate, that is, the tropics. The greatest diversity of species lives in the forests of South America (40 thousand), in South and Southeast Asia (more than 10 thousand), where there are ideal conditions for the number of sunny days, high humidity and the possibility of camouflage among dense foliage.

Mythology and symbolism of the butterfly

The butterfly is a symbol of our immortal Soul, which will someday fly out of its physical shell and be freed from the cocoon of the body. Butterfly-Soul-Psyche.

Butterflies flying towards the fire symbolize the desire of our Soul to find true light for itself, to cling to its source, but such closeness usually ends badly.

The butterfly with its stages of development: larva - caterpillar - pupa - winged creature - is a symbol of transformation, growth and development of the human Soul. Dying in each previous stage and being reborn in a new form at the next stage, our Soul is also capable of transformation. And the caterpillar, born to crawl, turns into a beautiful flying creature - a butterfly.

Butterflies were used to represent the inhabitants of the magical world of elves and fairies - representatives of the air element and air magic. They live in more subtle dimensions, and although our world is too rough for them, fairies sometimes appeared in it.

In Eastern traditions, the butterfly was more of a female symbol and a sign that a happy married life, easy and joyful relationships awaited her.

Rhythmologically, the butterfly is a sign that your energy is now growing, increasing. Of course, this means having the potential to do and have more - events, money, relationships. The more butterflies, the greater the growth potential. Try to rejoice at everything that comes to you, to thank the world from the bottom of your heart for all this.

Description

It acquired such an unusual name as pear peacock eye due to its incredibly unusual color . Each of the four wings is endowed with a beautiful large eye-shaped spot. It is precisely the same spots that can be found on the plumage of such a majestic bird as the peacock.

Caterpillars weave their cocoons exclusively on fruit-bearing trees and shrubs. Most often they can be found on pears. Perhaps the name peacock eye was given to it precisely because when the caterpillar curls up into a cocoon, it looks quite similar to a pear.

Large peacock eye, one of the largest butterflies living in the European part of the globe. Each wing is approximately 6–7 cm in size, so the total length of the insect is about 15–16 cm. This is quite a long length for an insect such as a butterfly. It is rare to find a larger Saturnia in nature, but there are such cases. At night, flapping its wings, a large peacock eye can easily be confused with a small bat. The body of the butterfly itself is large, like the wings, and also has a noticeable fur edge. Females differ from males in the length of their whiskers.

Males have antennae:

Great length.
Cirrus.
They have many branches.
Wide.
Constantly swaying.

Females have antennae:

Small ones.
More like scallops.

Proper nutrition in the peacock eye is disrupted because the proboscis, through which the insect feeds, has an underdeveloped structure. The butterfly feeds on internal resources that were able to be deposited while it was in the caterpillar stage of development.

The color of Saturnia is usually gray with brown spots. Clearly defined stripes and spots on the wings of the insect are clearly visible. The color of the peacock eye is also unusual in that it has a light cream-colored edging at the end of its wings.

Range and habitat

Representatives of this genus live throughout Eurasia, from Portugal to Japan. But most of these insects are found in Germany. The peacock eye in this country was recognized as the butterfly of the year in 2009. The peacock eye prefers to live in open areas: meadows, forest edges, parks, gardens. In such places the moth feels good, as there is enough moisture and the necessary space. The butterfly's favorite place is thickets of nettles. It can also be found in the mountains, at an altitude of 2 km. There is not enough space in the forests for these insects, and they can injure their wings. From March to October, butterflies fly in open areas, and with the onset of cold weather they look for a cooler place with good shelter.