Butterfly Garden

 Enjoy the charming, color and beauty of nature in our butterfly garden, a tropical rainforest small paradise nook with a exquisite Costa Rica butterfly selection, including the Blue Morpho butterfly (Morpho peleides), one of the icons of the rainforest. So you can feel and be one with the peace of nature, and make your Costa Rica vacation naturally harmonious, learning at the same time about the life aspects of butterflies.

Butterfly Garden
Location: Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica. Hotel Los Lagos
Schedule: 8:00 am to 4:00 pm.
Includes: Butterfly garden information & explanation with facts about rainforest butterflies.
Recommendations: Camera with good optical zoom.
Price: Access is included with your hotel reservation or hotel entrance fee.
*Because of very delicate butterfly body and wings structure, please don't try to catch or hold the butterflies.

Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho peleides). A small butterfly (Eurybia lycisca) over an heliconia flower (Heliconia latispatha). The butterfly Eurybia lycisca measures almost 3 cm. This butterfly (Eurybia lycisca) features iridiscent blue color in both sexes. Eurybia lycisca butterfly has metallic blue eyes and an extraordinarily long proboscis. Butterfly Garden (Anartia jatrophae). Butterfly Garden (Eurytides euryleon clusoculis). Heliconius Butterfly (Heliconius melpomene) mimics aposematic coloration. Rain Forest icon: Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho peleides). Toas Swallowtail Butterfly (Heraclides thoas) has a bird dropping disguised caterpillar! Passionflower Butterfly (Heliconius hecale zuleika) has true aposematic coloration. Malachite Butterfly (Siproeta stelens biplagiata). Well known Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) migrates here from North America. Caterpillar of Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus). Caterpillar of Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus). Blue Morpho butterfly showing its underside with brown color. A butterfly that usually visits the mud (Eurytides euryleon clusoculis). Orange Long winged Butterfly (Dryas iulia). The Owl Butterfly (Caligo eurilochus sulanus) is the largest of Costa Rica butterflies. The Owl Butterfly (Caligo eurilochus sulanus) with its eyespots. Owl Butterfly (Caligo eurilochus sulanus) showing its proboscis rolled. Butterfly (Eurybia lycisca) showing its iridiscent blue color. Owl Butterfly (Caligo eurilochus sulanus) feeding on rotten fruit. Owl Butterfly (Caligo eurilochus sulanus) with proboscis extended.

 This butterfly garden will show you the great world of butterflies. Economically, butterflies are important by virtue of their being one of the major agents of pollination. A butterfly is an insect of the order Lepidoptera. As a Lepidoptera, the butterfly is notable for their unusual life cycle with a larval caterpillar stage, an inactive pupal stage, and a spectacular metamorphosis into a familiar and colorful winged adult form. Most species are day-flying so they regularly attract attention. The diverse patterns formed by their brightly colored wings and their erratic yet graceful flight have made butterfly watching a popular hobby and the butterfly garden a tourist attraction of the rainforest.

The butterfly life cycle have four stages:
1) Egg: embryo initial period.
2) Larva (or Caterpillar): is the stage exclusively for feeding and growing.
3) Pupa (or Chrysalis): is the resting and inactive stage & tissues metamorphosis from larva to adult.
4) Adult butterfly (imago): is the adulthood stage, sexual maturity & flight capability.

 Endowed with a strong mandibled mouth, the butterfly caterpillar can be considered as an legged stomach that feeds, feeds and feeds!... With the only purpose of grow. But also butterfly larvae features a wide variety of defenses against predator that feed on them (insects, frogs, birds or monkeys), such that urticant spines or hairs, by having toxins that make it a noxious mouthful or by disguising by means of non eatable or dangerous appearance mimicry. That's the case of the Toas Swallowtail Butterfly (Heraclides thoas) caterpillar, whose bird dropping disguise protection is enhanced by its habit of resting on the upper side of leaves. Also exist the camouflage protection by which the butterfly larvae are blended with its background and difficult to be detected.

 The protection against predators also exists in the adult butterfly, it can be hiding by camouflage (as the Blue Morpho butterfly does at resting because its lower-side wing coloration blends well with trunk and rock surfaces), or advertising it presence by mimicry, several species (even unrelated) evolve to resemble each other in warning by conspicuous coloration to predators, called aposematic coloration, in order to spare the damage (reducing predator sampling rates) because of the avoidance over the possibly noxious or unpalatable butterfly. Mimicry can occurs in two ways: a true dangerous butterfly group warns, with conspicuous similar wing coloration patterns, about toxins presence in its body (which is called Müllerian mimicry), whereas another group only have a close appearance to the noxious one, with no damage capability, that fool predators that avoids the first group by instinct, getting this way the vital protection (this is called Batesian mimicry).

Heliconius butterfly group from American tropical rain forest is the classical model for Müllerian mimicry, so as an example Heliconius melpomene (solitary and rare avoids direct sunlight) and Heliconius erato (familiar garden visitor and the commonest Heliconius in Costa Rica, flies in direct sunlight) belongs to the same mimicry group, being a good example of true unpalatable butterflies.

The adult Butterfly consume only liquids and these are sucked by means of their proboscis. This they do for water, for energy from sugars in nectar and for sodium and other minerals which are vital for its reproduction so. Although he butterfly feeds primarily on nectar from flowers (and thus its essential ecological role as pollinators each time a butterfly visit a flower), is important the nourishment obtained sipping water from damp patches as well as from tree sap, rotting fruit, dung, and dissolved minerals in wet sand or mud (as butterfly Eurytides euryleon clusoculis).

 Scale covering is one of the main characteristic of the butterfly wings. Indeed, the coloration of butterfly wings is created by these minute scales, which are pigmented with melanin that give them blacks and browns. And how the astonishing and fantastic blues, greens, reds and iridescent hues are created is one of the most extraordinary demonstrations of light optical physics in a living creature. The hues in the butterfly wings are not by pigments but the result of coherent scattering of light by the crystal microstructure of the scales.

As example, the Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho peleides) is colored in metallic, shimmering and iridescent shades of blue. But unlike most butterflies, the Blue Morpho coloration is not a result of pigmentation. They are brown, but by virtue of their complex crystalline structured scales that absorbs all colors of the spectrum except blue, then appear that color. Blue Morpho butterfly is a rainforest dweller but will venture into sunny clearings in order to warm themselves. Blue Morpho butterflies don't visit flowers, instead they feed on the juices of rotting fruits with which they may also be lured, as well on trees bark sap. The entire life cycle of the Blue Morpho butterfly, from egg to death, is approximately 137 days.

Don't forget that after an intense and active tour day you can enjoy relax in the natural hot springs hotel facilities and get relax, health and beauty at our Fangus Spa Resort.