Aglais io – Peacock butterfly – Tagpfauenauge – Paon-du-jour

I rarely use GIFs in my articles but in this case I let my smartphone create some. The butterfly was on my leg; the photos are taken in my garden as the butterflies were coming to feed on the plums fallen to the ground.

The Peacock butterfly is territorial and uses 3 ways of avoiding or chasing predators. The first one is that it blends in the surrounding, as it resembles to a dry leaf when it has its wings folded. The second one is when it spreads its wings and scares the birds with his colors and the pattern resembling 2 eyes. The third way to keep the predators away is used when hibernating, when the butterfly may encounter rodents in the darkness: it is making hissing noises, both sounds and ultrasounds…