Hello everyone, good morning and happy beginning of the week. I hope you had a very nice Sunday in some paradisiacal place surrounded by lots of nature. In my tireless search for the life of the species around me, minus the snakes of course, I came across this large black butterfly, which was resting on top of the wall of the backyard of my house. It was not so easy to photograph it, as you will see, due to the height and position it adopted.

Some details you should know before going into the descriptive matter of this species, is that it was a rainy day, there was a lot of humidity around, the weather was going from warm to cool, with a little bit of steam in the air since it had been quite sunny earlier, and finally, it was almost afternoon. The place where she was was open, it was not a room, and she had been there for a few hours, I guess that foreseeing that the rain was coming, she took shelter in this place.

This type of butterfly, of large size, with shades between light and dark brown, black, yellow, pink, and gray, with many different motifs on its wings, has several names depending on where it is found in Latin America; for some it is the Black Butterfly, others call it the Butterfly of Death, muertera, night butterfly, old mouse, taras, money moths, witches or ura. Many superstitions and symbologies revolve around it, and I think that just like the black cat, it is one more beautiful species of our mother nature that is not to blame for creating such subjective ideas.

But speaking in more scientific terms, the real name of this species is Ascalapha odorata, and it is among the variety of ditrisian Lepidoptera of the family Erebidae Wikipedia These terms are much more familiar to our professional and broad connoisseurs of the animal world. The size of this butterfly can reach and even exceed 19 cm in length, especially in females. Perhaps for that reason I was a bit frightened when I saw it, and felt a certain apprehension about getting closer to photograph it. It is said that males are smaller and their wings are darker.

In general, both have brown wings on the upper part, with some purple and pink traces. The most common places to find these butterflies are the tropical zones because there they get their food more easily. It is considered a nocturnal butterfly, since they fly at night and enter houses looking for the light of the bulbs, which is why they become disoriented.

Unfortunately, their dark appearance and large size inspires fear, and they are even related to superstitions and bad vibes. The story goes that its scientific name, Ascalapha odorata, comes from the demon Ascalaphus, the king of the underworld according to Greek mythology. In many parts of the world it is associated with death, tragedies, bad luck and bad omen. To the point that if they are found inside houses, they say that someone will die very soon, and they kill them or take them out immediately. This is how American cultures are when it comes to superstitions, and they have no idea how many stories revolve around this butterfly.

But going into another kind of information, the black butterfly is considered a kind of moth because of the way it perches and spreads its wings. In this regard says: Animal Expert - Differences between butterflies and moths, that although there are many similarities between these two beautiful species, as in the case of their metamorphosis process, the presence of scales on their wings, and the ability to camouflage themselves in nature; there are also features that differentiate them as in the case of the way they perch or rest on some surface, where the butterfly does it with its wings folded on its back, closing and opening eventually, while the moth fully deploys its wings to the sides and remain resting on that surface.

Of course, there are many other differences between the two, which can be documented in the sources of information that I share at the end of this publication. I hope you enjoyed this content, thank you very much for visiting my blog. Have a wonderful start of the week.

_{INFORMATION SOURCE}

_{Black butterfly - Reino animalia
Black butterfly - Instagram
Black butterfly - Google
Ascalapha odorata - Wikipedia
Animal Expert - Differences between butterflies and moths}

_{IMAGE SOURCES}

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