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mistressofmuses) wrote2024-10-25 07:38 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2024-10-25 07:38 pm
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Monday: The Butterfly Pavilion
On Monday we went to the Butterfly Pavilion. :) It's the annual "Spiders of the World" exhibit for October, which is always fun.
They had some new spiders in the first exhibit area, as well as a really neat leaf-cutter ant exhibit. The ants are in a series of three terrariums - one in the center that is solid and lets them build their "underground" tunnels, then one glass terrarium on each side with food and leaves for them to cut and bring into their colony. The pictures I got weren't very impressive, but it was neat to see in person!
There's always the underwater invertebrates, which are fun:
A very fancy bat star.
A really neat one: a harlequin shrimp! It barely looked like a real creature!
Rarely spotted: the peacock mantis shrimp! It was exciting to get to see it this time, since usually it is hidden away very out of sight.
Sea urchins will pick up things from the sea floor - typically seashells, small rocks, bits of coral, etc. and "wear" them as camouflage. This means you can get them to pick up all sorts of things, so in aquariums it's popular to give them silly things like tiny top hats to "wear."
I really like all the different styles these sea urchins have gone for, haha.
And then the butterfly conservatory, which is always nice.
These are always one of my favorites. So pretty!
The chrysalis boards, with lots of new emergees!
Monarchs delight me, even if they're not as "exotic" as most of the species here.
I liked that this one matched his flower choice so well.
A bit tattered, but still pretty.
I was aiming for the big brown and white butterfly on the flowers, but liked the monarch photobomb in the background.
So colorful!
Part of the seasonal displays is the open-air spider exhibit. Various orb-weavers, allowed to build their webs wherever they want in the enclosure, and then you can walk among them, which is pretty neat!
This one is a golden orb-weaver, and they're a US native species. I saw some at a rest stop in Wyoming once, but while they do live in Colorado, I haven't seen them in the wild here.
I almost smacked into this little one with my skirt!
Another golden orb-weaver.
There were a lot of really neat, much bigger ones... but a lot of those build their webs up really high, and it's very hard to get good pictures of them against the backlit space. Super cool to look at, though. And such neat, elaborate webs!
Not in the open air section, but a tarantula in one of the other sections. An antilles pinktoe! They are one of my favorites: they look so fluffy, and are such a pretty mix of colors! If I ever have the setup needed for an arboreal tarantula, I hope to get one of these guys.
And a giant katydid! It's maybe hard to tell the true scale, but he's easily longer than my hand! I want to print the picture off and hang it up for our katydids, so that they have a role model, haha.
They had some new spiders in the first exhibit area, as well as a really neat leaf-cutter ant exhibit. The ants are in a series of three terrariums - one in the center that is solid and lets them build their "underground" tunnels, then one glass terrarium on each side with food and leaves for them to cut and bring into their colony. The pictures I got weren't very impressive, but it was neat to see in person!
There's always the underwater invertebrates, which are fun:
A very fancy bat star.
A really neat one: a harlequin shrimp! It barely looked like a real creature!
Rarely spotted: the peacock mantis shrimp! It was exciting to get to see it this time, since usually it is hidden away very out of sight.
Sea urchins will pick up things from the sea floor - typically seashells, small rocks, bits of coral, etc. and "wear" them as camouflage. This means you can get them to pick up all sorts of things, so in aquariums it's popular to give them silly things like tiny top hats to "wear."
I really like all the different styles these sea urchins have gone for, haha.
And then the butterfly conservatory, which is always nice.
These are always one of my favorites. So pretty!
The chrysalis boards, with lots of new emergees!
Monarchs delight me, even if they're not as "exotic" as most of the species here.
I liked that this one matched his flower choice so well.
A bit tattered, but still pretty.
I was aiming for the big brown and white butterfly on the flowers, but liked the monarch photobomb in the background.
So colorful!
Part of the seasonal displays is the open-air spider exhibit. Various orb-weavers, allowed to build their webs wherever they want in the enclosure, and then you can walk among them, which is pretty neat!
This one is a golden orb-weaver, and they're a US native species. I saw some at a rest stop in Wyoming once, but while they do live in Colorado, I haven't seen them in the wild here.
I almost smacked into this little one with my skirt!
Another golden orb-weaver.
There were a lot of really neat, much bigger ones... but a lot of those build their webs up really high, and it's very hard to get good pictures of them against the backlit space. Super cool to look at, though. And such neat, elaborate webs!
Not in the open air section, but a tarantula in one of the other sections. An antilles pinktoe! They are one of my favorites: they look so fluffy, and are such a pretty mix of colors! If I ever have the setup needed for an arboreal tarantula, I hope to get one of these guys.
And a giant katydid! It's maybe hard to tell the true scale, but he's easily longer than my hand! I want to print the picture off and hang it up for our katydids, so that they have a role model, haha.