Butterflies, like flowers, cause sincere admiration for their beauty. Each country has its own ideas about the origin of these amazing creatures. In ancient Greece, they believed that the butterfly and the soul are one and the same. And now in modern Greek, they have one name. As for Russia, here the word "butterfly" was first used in the XVIII century. According to most scholars, it takes its name from the word "woman" - "married woman."
Currently, most species of butterflies are listed in the Red Book. The man who is guilty of his indefatigable activity destroys their habitat is to blame. This article is dedicated to one of the most beautiful butterflies, which is endangered. This is an Apollo butterfly.
origin of name
Why the Apollo butterfly was named after the Greek god of light, the patron of the arts and the leader of the nine muses, now no one will say for sure. We can only build our own assumptions on this score. The butterfly is very beautiful. Large, light in color, it is visible from afar. Prefers mountain plains. Maybe she was named after one of the gods because of her beauty and the fact that she loves to live closer to the sun.
Apollo butterfly: description and lifestyle
In a dry scientific language, Apollo is a day butterfly of the sailing family (Papilionidae). Full name - Sailboat Apollo (Parnassius apollo). Apollo butterfly is incredibly beautiful - it has translucent wings of white or cream color, decorated with large rounded spots. On the front wings they are black. The rear ones have red spots with a black border. This is the largest butterfly in European Russia. The wingspan of it can reach 9-10 centimeters.
Habitat - open and sun-warmed mountain plains, alpine meadows and slopes of Europe, Ukraine, the Urals, Siberia, the Caucasus, the Tien Shan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The appearance period is from July to September. Apollo butterfly prefers large flowers of oregano, a godson, loves different types of clover. Apollo breeds almost immediately after exiting the pupae. The female lays up to 120 eggs, each separately on a fodder plant. Adult Apollo caterpillars are also very beautiful. Black, as if velvet, decorated with two rows of red-orange spots, they look very impressive. The caterpillar eats juicy leaves of stonecrop, rabbit cabbage.
The apollo pupal stage lasts 1-3 weeks. Then a new butterfly emerges from it.
Such a different Apollo
The insect is of great interest to naturalists in that it has a huge number of species. Today, at least 600 varieties of Apollo are known.
Parnassius mnemosyne clouded Apollo, or mnemosyne, is one of the most beautiful species. Snow-white wings, completely transparent at the edges, are decorated only with black spots. This makes the butterfly incredibly elegant. Its second name is black mnemosyne, since it is painted only in two colors - white and black.
Arctic Apollo butterfly (Parnassius arcticus) is another beautiful species. It lives in the mountain tundra in the territory of Yakutia and the Khabarovsk Territory. She was also found in the Magadan region. The wings are white with small black spots. Interestingly, the Gorodkova corydalis plant is fodder for both butterflies and caterpillars of the Arctic Apollo. The biology of this species has hardly been studied due to its extreme rarity.
Apollo butterfly: interesting facts and details
The beauty of this insect was admired by many famous researchers and biologists who described it in the most poetic terms. Someone compared the flight of Apollo with the poetry of the movement, others called him the graceful inhabitant of the Alps.
In the evening, the butterfly goes down and hides in the grass at night. In danger, it first tries to fly away, but does it very awkwardly, because it flies poorly. Having realized that flight cannot be saved, he spreads his wings and begins to rub against them with his paw, making hissing sounds. So she tries to intimidate her enemy. Despite the reputation of a butterfly, which does not fly very well, in search of food an insect can fly up to 5 kilometers per day. Arctic Apollo lives on the border of a territory where snow never melts. And Parnassius hannyngtoni is the highest alpine butterfly living in the Himalayas, at an altitude of 6000 meters above sea level.
