Butterflies and Blue

Written: 5/12/21

Famous scientists like Sir Isaac Newton have been fascinated by the color blue in nature. It’s incredibly rare and is absolutely beautiful, but why do they only rarely exist in nature? Well, we’ll have to look into what pigment is. Pigment is a thing that is released from an organism’s body due to the things it eats. Flamingoes get their pink pigment from the crustaceans (shrimp, crabs) they eat. Spoiler: there really aren’t any organisms that make blue pigment. Blue butterflies and jays don’t actually release blue pigment. If you look at a blue jay’s wings closely, its blue color fades. Even though the same thing doesn’t happen to blue butterflies, they both have evolved the same way. Nothing in nature is truly blue (except for the blue morpho butterfly) as a matter of fact. If you take a look at blue butterflies from a different angle, you can see that they start to shine purple like a hologram of some sort. Different colors of light have different wavelengths. When scientists carefully examine blue butterfly wings with a microscope, they notice their structure. Blue butterfly wings are structured microscopically so that only waves that are more wave-ey are seen. Basically, only blue and purple light can pass through the butterfly wings.