Butterfly

With greenery everywhere, the lovely butterflies of Malaysia can be found all year round.

They are there, in the mornings and evenings, and especially after showers, and when the sun starts to shine.

And they are there not only during flowering seasons but also during the various fruiting seasons.

Where Can You Find Butterflies of Malaysia?

Well, you can find Malaysian butterflies in the gardens and urban parks, forest fringes, open habitats, and also in thick forests and jungle, in the highlands and lowlands. Because where there are trees and plants, butterflies will usually visit.
The rare species of Malaysian butterflies can mostly be observed in undisturbed forests where their food plants are in abundance -- in the protected rain-forests of the national and state parks, and forest reserves in the country.

The butterflies of Malaysia can be found spread out intermittently in the lowlands, highlands, mangrove and coastal areas and also in the urban locations, depending on the kinds of food or food plants that they require.

Probably the most famous of all the Malaysian butterflies is the Rajah Brooke's Birdwing (Trogonoptera brookiana) of the Papilionidae family, a beautiful distinctive black and electric-green birdwing butterfly. It is in fact the national butterfly of the nation, and it can be found abundantly in the rain-forests of Malaysia.

Butterfly Life-cycle

Butterflies are insects, and they belong to the distinctive order known as Lepidoptera. While there are more than 140,000 species of Lepidoptera in the world, only 20,000 species are butterflies, the rest being moths. Malaysia has around 1,200 species of butterflies.
A butterfly's life-cycle comprises of egg (ovum), caterpillar (larva), pupa (chrysalis) and adult (imago). This process is known as metamorphosis. Some take a longer period in the various stages, and some live shorter lives than others. Some butterflies live only for a couple of weeks while some others live longer up to a couple of months.

Help Preserve Our Environment Some flutter and bumble haphazardly through the air, some glide smoothly through the woods and flowers, and some just love to sunbathe!! Butterflies, those wonderful and beautiful creatures of God, are what they are. They come in all sizes - big, medium and teeny-weeny ones. And all are such marvellous and incredible creatures to watch. Seems like God created these lovely creatures for us to relax, enjoy and be amazed by them. But sadly, day by day, a number of the butterfly species become extinct due to many reasons, like loss and destruction of their natural habitat due to human development, and climatic and weather changes.Future generations may not see or may never know of the existence of some of the wonderful butterfly species that we now have if we forget about conservation.