CLOSED: Butterflies

The next 3 pictures may be all the same kind. If I remember correctly all of them were taken on the same plant.

I like the little tiny one.

Eggs.

Your last butterfly is a Gray Cracker (Hamadryas februa).
As for the cats and chrysalis' I have no clue. The exhibit I worked was not allowed to have host plants in the exhibit, per the USDA permit. They did not want to take a chance of the accidental release of any parasite or species into our environment to threaten our butterflies. Therefore, they mated but there was no place to lay eggs, but it they did, there was no food source for the larva. The exhibit was open for a month and then closed to the public for the next month to allow through cleaning of any plant materials, dead insects, etc. I guess Canada wasn't as strict since the temperature there is so much cooler.
Glad you were able to enjoy the experience, I would encourage anyone that has the opportunity to go to an exhibit like that to do so.

Sheila - thanks for the information about the butterflies.

By parasite and species, you mean the critters right?, not the plants themselves? This display had a lot of different plants it it but none that aren't available at most garden centers. The only thing that I found dissapointing in this display of the fake chrysalis' we found on some of the plants - at least they looked fake to my husband and I. Well, maybe not fake, I'm sure the chrysalis' themselves were real but the looked like they had been hot glued on. Could be they normally do look like that. We didn't get any photos of that though. I can't recall the name on the sign now but they were really big - about 3 inches long.

Could be that those caterpillars are from moths that lay eggs on numerous plants and eat about anything! So if you know what moths were in the exhibit do a search on the larval stage of them.
The parasites could be some that came with the butterfly chrysalis from S America etc. and they and the butterflies if released in our area, may cause danger to our native butterflies. Example: remember the fruit flies?? As for the plants, no plant material is allowed to leave the exhibit either because of eggs that may have been laid on them, or parasites hitching a ride. All this was of course from USDA and Canada may have different rules for their exhibit.
One experience I had was getting to try one of the bananas that were grown in the conservatory while I was there. They picked a bunch of bananas they were very ripe and gave them to the people viewing the exhibit, with a caution that they could not remove them from the area. Any uneaten portion and the peelings were left there to be food for the butterflies. Those were some delicious bananas, nothing like those we have in stores. Sort of like home grown vs. hot house tomatoes.

I vaguely remember that the larger chrysalis' were for some kind of moth that could be why they were glued on.

The only words of caution I saw at the exhibit was a couple of signs that asked you the check yourself for hitchhiking butterflies as you left the hot house

Oh, I was speaking about the pictures you had posted of the cats. Sorry.
The chrysalis would be for educational maybe? We had a case of some of our native bfs that were allow to emerge and be released inside the exhibit, but the ones from tropics were in another area.

That's neat that they had different areas. This one only had one area and none of them were native to my knowlegde - all tropical.

We sure enjoyed it and spent about 3 hours there.

GTBG... don't forget to mark the thread as solved if that is all to id.
Nice visiting with you.