A butterfly house, conservatory, or lepidopterarium is a facility which is specifically intended for the breeding and display of

butterflies Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...

with an emphasis on education. Some butterfly houses also feature other insects and

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

s. Butterfly houses are owned and operated by museums, universities, non-profit corporations, and private individuals as part of their residence; as well as small businesses that are owner operated.

History

Live butterfly exhibits became popular in England in the end of the 1970s, appealing to the British love of

greenhouse A greenhouse (also called a glasshouse, or, if with sufficient heating, a hothouse) is a structure with walls and roof made chiefly of Transparent ceramics, transparent material, such as glass, in which plants requiring regulated climatic condit ...

s and natural settings. The tropical world's first live butterfly and insect sanctuary is Penang Butterfly Farm in Penang, Malaysia, established on March 29, 1986. The first butterfly house in the United States,

Butterfly World Butterfly World is located in Tradewinds Park in Coconut Creek, Florida, United States. It opened in 1988, and is the largest butterfly park in the world, and the first park of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The facility houses around 20,000 ...

, opened in Coconut Creek, Florida, in 1988.

Activities

Butterfly houses are typically open to the public. Exploration of such facilities may be with a guide or self-paced. Guided tours may last about fifteen minutes, as the guide points out all the species of butterflies that are in the greenhouse that day. Stocks vary, as new shipments usually arrive weekly. Guides may also show butterfly

eggs Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1,500 BCE. The most widely consumed eggs are those of fowl, especial ...

caterpillars Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Symp ...

, and chrysalids and identify specific plants that are favored by each species. Usually, the best time to see butterflies emerging from their

pupae A pupa ( la, pupa, "doll"; plural: ''pupae'') is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their ...

is between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Butterflies are most active on warm and sunny days with little

wind Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...

, because they require the heat of the

sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

to aid in their digestion. On rainy days, they usually hide in the flowers and leaves. There are often many different species in such butterfly houses, with stock including butterflies from Africa,

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

, South America,

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

, the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

, and other places. The vibrant colors and patterns on the wings of the insects have earned them the fanciful nickname "flying flowers" . Many species of adult butterflies live only one to two weeks, during which time they must produce a new generation. Some species, such as the familiar monarch butterfly, however, can live as long as six months or even longer in the wild. Schools have butterfly houses for educational purposes. In Puerto Rico, a group of students from the Clara Maldonado de Aramburu School in Juncos, celebrated the relaunching of its butterfly house which had been destroyed by

Hurricane Maria Hurricane Maria was a deadly Saffir–Simpson scale#Category 5, Category 5 Tropical cyclone, hurricane that devastated the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly Dominica, Saint Croix, and Puerto Rico. It is regarded as the wo ...

on September 19, 2017. With help from community members, the butterfly houses and ecosystem was fixed, and their monarch butterflies took flight in March 2019.

References

External links

Visiting Butterfly Houses, Farms and Gardens
{{Zoos Butterflies Insectariums

History

Activities

See also

References

External links