Blue Morpho Butterfly

It is a sight to make you heart beat faster - a huge bright blue butterfly flitting across your path. The Blue Morpho butterfly is about 5" across and has a completely different underside. We toured a butterfly farm near Quespos where it was explained to us that the underside of the wings, when folded offer the brightly colored morpho protection because to a predator it looks that there is an big eye staring back at them.


(The image is from a website of Tom Davis, a frequent traveller to Costa Rica. His website has lots of interesting photos of the fauna of CR.)

These butterflies rarely land with their wings open so that it is difficult to take a picture of them. It is my guess that may be why there are so many copywrited photos of the butterfly. If I had been lucky enough to score a good photo I guess I might be inclined to copywrite it too! But if you go to Google Images and enter Blue Morpho you will be able to see more pictures of this gorgeous creature.