Spend a moment in our Butterfly Rainforest with Ryan talking about the Starry night cracker, Hamadryas laodamia, native to Central and South America. These butterflies are related to the other species of Cracker butterflies you’ll see in our exhibit.

You’ll be able to recognize the males because they have no white stripes on their wings, while the females look similar to other Cracker species because they do have white stripes.

Transcript

Hello. Welcome to the Butterfly Rainforest the Florida Museum of Natural History. My name is Ryan and today we’ll be releasing another cracker butterfly.

Now, like other Crackers it hails from Central and South America, but this one is a little bit different in that the male and female look different from each other. So this is the female Starrynight cracker or Hamadreas laodamia. And here is the male. The male will have fewer spots on its wings, if he’ll open up. There we go. And although it probably doesn’t show here there is a bit of an iridescence that can appear, to attract females. So you can see them side by side here.

Whether or not this species of cracker actually makes the cracker sound that the group of butterflies gets their name, it is a bit up for debate. There’s not a confirmation on whether or not these make the actual cracking sounds. But like other crackers they do feed on rotting material. They will not feed on flowers.

These are actually fairly common butterflies here in the Butterfly Rainforest. Although the female can be confused for a very similar species known as the Blue cracker or the Red cracker. Both those butterflies look very similar to the female, but the male here is very distinctive.

So hopefully you’ll get a chance to come out and see him. I hope you’ve enjoyed today and have a great rest of the day. Thank you.


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Video by Ryan Fessenden; Produced by Radha Krueger