I honestly can’t decide if this butterfly is more beautiful with its wings open or closed.

With wings open it’s certainly more striking – the iridescent neon blue looks like something out of a utopian sci-fi novel as it flutters through the jungle. But the intricate eyeball-like patterns of the closed wings are utterly mesmerising, they could just about send you into a trance.

Morphos are a genus of butterfly from Latin America consisting of 29 species, and they represent some of the most beautiful butterflies on the planet. I’m pretty sure one species from this genus, the Common Morpho, was actually the model for the butterfly emoji 🦋 – not a bad effort given that it had to compete with more than 18,000 other species of butterfly worldwide!

But what about you, are you a wings open or a wings closed kind of person? 👀

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Achilles Morpho Butterfly (Morpho achilles), Los Amigos Biological Station, Madre de Dios, Peru