Winter Butterfly

Yesterday while I was playing outside in the snow, I tripped on this butterfly.  I ran inside and looked him up. He is a Winter Coconut butterfly. Three eggs are laid on a coconut flower.   The baby caterpillars then eat the inside of the immature coconut. They stay in groups of 3 caterpillars.  Once they are ready to emerge as butterflies they come out of one end of the coconut before the coconut gets to hard. Then they cover the holes with a mixture of saliva and webbing and the coconut shells grows over it forming three “eyes”.  The butterflies are really cool.