Heroes Not Zombies

Butterflies amaze me. When I see one flying in the garden I am astonished by their flight. They seem to fly in such irregular, even random, ways. You just can’t tell where they will go next. However they also fly with fantastic accuracy, landing exactly on a particular flower to suck up its nectar. When you see two or more of them flying together they seem to dance around each other at great speed without crashing into each other.

The colours and patterns on their wings are beautiful and I was amazed to read that the colours are created by a sort of prism effect in their structure, not by pigments! At least, if I understand it correctly, that’s true of iridescent ones.

When I get a chance to look at one up close I marvel at the shape and form of them. If you were to try and imagine an alien creature nobody had ever seen before would you come up with something as elaborate or complex as this?

And I can’t see a butterfly without thinking of how radically different it is in each of its life stages. Does anyone understand how it undergoes such profound metamorphoses?

Beautiful and awe inspiring. Such common yet such extraordinary creatures. They delight me and make me so aware of the limits of human knowledge. How little we know about the everyday world we live in.