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Glasswing Butterfly — printable fact sheet
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Glasswing Butterfly
Greta oto
Greta oto, the glasswing of Central and South America, solves the problem of camouflage by simply not being there: most of its wing membrane carries no coloured scales, and the naked chitin is coated in a dense, irregular carpet of tiny nanopillars. Those pillars vary randomly i…
Did you know?
- Despite their delicate, see-through wings, Glasswing Butterflies can migrate up to 12 miles in a single day.
- The anti-reflective nanostructure works because the pillar heights are randomly distributed - a regular array would only cancel reflections at particular wavelengths and angles. Male glasswings congregate at dried, dying plants rather than fresh flowers because it is the wilting tissue that releases the alkaloids they need for their pheromone. The clear wings are edged with opaque orange-brown borders, so a resting glasswing reads as a small dark outline rather than a butterfly.
What I learned
Draw the glasswing butterfly
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