Description
Ornithoptera paradisea is a large butterfly with a wingspan ranging from 140 mm to 190 mm. Males and females differ in the size, shape and colour of the wings.
Male.Males have black fore wings. The costal edge is black and there are two large, yellow gold and green bands. The underside of the male forewing is green with black veins and at the apex there is a black area. The hind wings are tiny triangles, golden and with thin tails. The inner edge of the hind wing is black and there is usually a green stripe between the golden area and the inner edge. The outer edge of the hind wing is usually green.The underside is very similar to the upperside but the inner edge is green and hairy. The hindwings have tails of uncertain selective origin.The only other tailed Ornithoptera is Ornithoptera meridionalis The abdomen is yellow, the head and thorax are black and green.
Female. O. paradisea is strongly sexually dimorphic and the significantly larger female covers the upper range of the wing-span.The basic colour is dark-brown. Two groups of white spots dominate the fore wing and on the hind wings there is a white area with a yellow outer edge. Between these there is a chain of black spots. The underside is very similar to the upperside, but the colours are stronger. The abdomen is yellow, the head and thorax are black and green.
Read more about this topic: Ornithoptera Paradisea
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)