Check out this butterfly emerging from its chrysalis! An amazing moment for you to share with me. Did you guess this butterfly for last week’s puzzler?
I thought it was going to be a Viceroy, but as you can see, it was NOT orange and black when it emerged. But even so, WOW! If possible it was even more beautiful.
This is what a Viceroy looks like. Beautiful, right? Like a monarch, it is distasteful to birds and warns them of this fact with its bright orange colors. Monarchs and viceroys are Mullerian mimics. This is a phenomenon in which species with the same defenses share a similar appearance. In doing so, predators learn the first time, and then avoid all similar butterflies in the future, even if that butterfly is not the same species.
