From the iridescent blue wings of the Eumaeus atala butterfly to the painted lady’s signature fiery orange, it’s no secret butterflies have some pretty captivating flappers. For a long time ...

The biologists studied free-flying butterflies, and in their aerodynamic analysis, found the creatures’ wings form a cupped shape during the upstroke and “clap,” thrusting the butterfly forward.

Unlike many vibrant insects, who rely on pigment alone for their colors, a butterfly’s radiant shimmer has a special source: The precise structure and arrangement of microscopic scales on its wings.

On June 20, Dahlia found a butterfly that would come to play a much larger role in her life than she might have first thought. The monarch butterfly had a broken wing, meaning he could no longer fly.

A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS can have many jobs besides keeping the insect aloft. They may be called on to attract mates, to warn potential predators to stay away, to mimic other animals or even to ...

They were attempting to deactivate a crucial wing-patterning gene known as wntA, and they aimed to make this genetic change not in just one variety of butterfly, but in 22 types.

Think of a monarch butterfly, and a distinctive image pops up: black-and-orange wings, with a sprinkling of white spots around the black edges. Those white spots may actually help monarchs ...

A butterfly’s wing is covered in hundreds of thousands of tiny scales, like miniature shingles on a paper-thin roof. A single scale is as small as a speck of dust yet surprisingly complex, with ...

Using a glass plate, tape and pins, she managed to hold down the butterfly long enough to glue on a piece of wing taken from a dead butterfly. 1,000-YEAR-OLD ARROWHEAD FOUND IN NORWAY.