A month ago or so I made a post about Uropyia meticulodina, a moth that does a great job at mimicking the appearance of a dead leaf.
Today I have something similar, a butterfly commonly known as the orange oakleaf. Other names it comes by include Indian oakleaf or dead leaf. Yep! Another creature that looks like a dead leaf.
Here's how it looks like with the wings closed:
But with the wings opened... it's like it's a totally different creature!
Damn..What a transformation!
Scientifically described as Kallima inachus, the species occurs in Tropical Asia:
The orange oakleaf is found in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, down to Tenasserim Hills. In Southeast Asia it occurs in southern China, Thailand, Laos, Taiwan, and Vietnam. It has been also recorded from Pakistan in 2000. source
Another interesting thing about this butterfly is that it exhibits polyphenism, which in this case translates to individuals that during wet season are slightly smaller with similar yet richer colors than their dry season counterparts:
Smaller than the dry-season form, but very similar to it. The colours are richer and darker, and the orange discal band more broadly bordered with black on the inner side. On the underside some of the specimens from areas of heavy rainfall have the ground colour very dark ochraceous brown. source
Here are a couple videos showing these beautiful critters in action:
I'll stop now, but there's plenty more on YouTube, just search for the species name!
As always, feel free to visit Wikipedia if you want to know all the boring semantics about this beautiful butterfly!
This is it for today plebs, see you soon with more wonders of nature!
P.S. spamming Tagging @enginewitty cause he loves this shit 😂
More Strange Animals
If you enjoyed this post here are some more amazing creatures to check out: