Long before a female Zebra Heliconian Butterfly is ready to emerge from her Chrysalis, the male Zebra Heliconian Butterflies in the area know she's on her way. These two are perched on her chrysalis, waiting:

They stay like this all day, waiting and waiting, once in a while moving their wings, but otherwise holding their perch position lest another male move in to take it.

She won't emerge until tomorrow. If you move her chrysalis to a different location the evening before she emerges, and you put it near a different colony of Zebra Butterflies, the males will investigate briefly, but they won't stay, nor will they mate with her as she emerges. At least that's what happened with the only one I moved.

Go To Zebra Heliconian "Birds and the Bees" Page Two

(I'm trying to keep my pages short enough that they load without crashing some people's computers, and still display pictures that are large enough to make my site special. This sequence is a long one.)