Hi, this is Callan with the Perot Museum
of Nature and Science. Today, let's do an
activity about butterflies. Butterflies
like many animals can use camouflage
where they try to not look like
themselves by looking like something
else, such as a plant or an animal. Here I'm crafting some butterflies and taking
inspiration from two real ones. One is a
giant blue morpho which we do not have
in Texas. Here, you can see both sides and how it looks differently on each side.
And I'm also inspired by the monarch
which we do see in Dallas. Butterfly
wings do have scales. If you zoom in on
these scales with a microscope you can
see they are incredibly complex. They may also have colored pigment like the
orange scales of a monarch, or may
interact with light in a way that looks
like color, such as in the blue scales of
the blue morpho where they just look
blue. Here, you can see my monarch which stands out from the backgrounds.
Monarchs contains toxins and these could be poisonous to something that might
want to eat them. The colors of a monarch are actually to warn these potential
predators. On the other hand, you can see
this blue morpho the brown side doesn't
really blend in to the sky, but the
blue side does. You might be able to see
how it's a little confusing to potential
predators like birds. Butterflies do
typically close their wings when they
land and that's why sometimes they'll look
different on each side. Here, on the brown
side of my blue morpho, I did try to add
some eye spots which you can also
imagine might confuse or intimidate
animals. I know it's hard to tell this is
not a butterfly. I made it's a real one
and it's called a red admiral and he's
using its tongue like proboscis to drink
from this plant. Could also see that
those colors are similar to the colors
of my monarch. This is another technique
called mimicry where an animal
might mimic or try to look like another
animal that has toxins even though
itself doesn't have them. You can see I'm
trying out my butterflies with different
things to see how they might camouflage.
You don't have to go outside to do this.
You could make a butterfly and test it
out in your own home. Another thing that
could be fun is different animals see
points of the infrared spectrum we can't
see. So that might be fun to imitate if
you have anything that glows in the dark.
If you do create your butterflies, please
let us know. Thanks for joining us today.
