You must admit that everyone loves butterflies, regardless of whether you are a specialist in lepidopterology or an ordinary resident of a metropolis ... They are often compared with flowers, and, in contrast to other insects, people have developed a very friendly attitude. Someone pays attention to the color, some to the form, and some to the size ...

Huge Butterfly

In the tropical forests of Asia, Saturnia-Atacus lives, which is considered by many collectors to be the largest butterfly in the world. This species really has huge wings, however, it is precisely at the expense of the latter that there are many disputes. The fact is that the researchers constantly added another centimeter to them, their sizes ultimately turned out to be hyperbolic, to an incredible 30-32 cm in wingspan!

How to measure the size of butterflies?

Why did it happen so? On the one hand, someone wanted to amaze the reader’s imagination with butterflies by adding “a little” size, and on the other hand, these data appeared as a result of the way the wings of the butterfly were spread for the collection. The wingspan of the “dried” butterflies from the collections depends on the angle of their spread - the larger the negative angle between the edge of the front wing and the hind wings, the greater will be the wingspan of the specimen (of course, not to infinity). This small trick is often used by enterprising collectors to profitably resell their butterflies, adding wingspan ...

So how do you actually set the size of butterfly wings? The most convincing and reliable method is trigonometric calculation using the example of the height of a triangle. So, we multiply the length of the line from the base of the front edge to the top of the front wing by the sine of the angle that this line forms with the axis of the butterfly’s body, and we get the length of one wing. Doubling it, we get the length of the wingspan of the butterfly! According to this method, the largest of the recorded, the wingspan of Saturnia-Atakus is 26.2 cm.

On the opposite side of the planet - in the tropical forests of Amazonia - Saturnia is also common and they also amaze with their size, although they are still inferior to South Asian. For example, in Saturnia-Arsenula and Saturnia-Cayo, wingspan reaches 19 cm!

The largest butterfly in the Western Hemisphere

The real giant and the largest butterfly of the Western hemisphere is Tizania Agrippina. This species is considered by many to be the largest in the world, although the wingspan is only 25-26 cm, which is comparable to Saturnia-Atakus, but the wing area of ​​the latter is definitely larger. In contrast, Tizania Agrippina has a very inconspicuous and pockmarked camouflage color - gray with a thick lace of black stripes.

The largest butterfly in the world

Officially, the largest butterfly in the world is a sailboat - Queen Alexandra’s bird wing from the forests of Papua New Guinea, this species has a wingspan of 28-29 cm! It belongs to a very rare species, because it is an endemic of New Guinea, and is now on the verge of extinction.International conventions prohibit not only trade, but also the capture of these rare insects. The Alexandra Parusnikov-Ptitsekrylov females significantly exceed the males in size - if the wingspan of the former is up to 28 cm, then in the latter - only 19 cm.

They also differ in color. Females have colored wings with a coffee hue and numerous cream and light coffee radial stripes. The color of males is much brighter and more attractive - with a predominance of metallic-green, sometimes blue and yellow colors with black longitudinal stripes.

The debate is about the maximum size of the wingspan of butterflies, and if you take the averaged data, then each of the species shows much more modest indicators than collectors would like.