Published Jan 04, 2025 • Last updated 39 minutes ago • 1 minute read
Outside, Ottawa has started what’s expected to be at least a week of super-chilly weather.
But inside the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Butterflies in Flight show, which wrapped up on Sunday, visitors wandered through a steamy solarium atmosphere surrounded by innumerable brilliantly colourful butterflies in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The show’s stars were brought in from sustainable farming operations in Costa Rica and the Philippines in chrysalis packages, then moved to a tiny nursery where visitors could get close enough to watch them hatch.
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“They just fly out when they’re ready. They’re only going to live between, you know, one and five weeks,” museum science interpreter Anne Cheng said. The average lifespan is about two weeks.
Cheng said the only caution to visitors was to not touch the butterflies’ wings.
“It’s very important that we don’t touch their wings (because) they have powder on them, especially the inner side of the wings.
“Once that powder is gone, they can’t fly, so it’s very sad.
“But, if they land on you, it’s kind of like they’re saying hello and they can’t hurt you. They’ll just say hi.”
Visitors were asked not to chase or grab the butterflies.
The constant hatching make it impossible to keep track of the insects, Cheng said.
“If you look up, there’s like a net on the ceiling, so some of them are on the net, some of them are under the leaves.”
The museum previously put on the Butterflies in Flight show in both 2017 and 2019.
The museum will be closed from Monday, Jan. 6, to Thursday, Jan. 16, for annual maintenance.
PHOTOS BY ASHLEY FRASER:
For ticket information and hours contact the Canadian Museum of Nature at https://nature.ca/en/visit-us/plan-your-visit/admission-fees/
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