Asian Butterflies

Asia is home to more than 5,000 known butterfly species, only second only to South America. The Insect Museum of West China has more than 4,000 Asian butterfly species in the collection. Some can live at an altitude of 5,670 meters, such as the white butterflies from the family Parnassiidae on the lower center of the picture. The wings of these butterflies are mostly white with red or blue scallops, most of which are distributed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and surrounding mountainous areas with high altitude as well as the colder regions of northern Asia.
Above them, we can also see some rare Asian swallowtail butterflies. The 3 butterflies with tiger stripes are the species of the genus Bhutanitis. They are distributed in the Himalayas and Hengduan Mountains at an altitude of 1800-2700 meters. The one on the top is a Chinese three-tailed swallowtail (Bhutanitis thaidina), the two below are the Mansfield's three-tailed swallowtail (Bhutanitis mansfieldi). They are listed as protected animals in China.
In the middle of the picture, there is a butterfly with large yellow markings on the its hind wings. It is the golden Kaiser-i-Hind (Teinopalpus aureus), which belongs to the first-class protected animal in China together with the giant panda, and is praised by the butterfly experts as “the butterfly in the dream”.
The two blue butterflies in the upper-left corner are from Indonesia. It is called Ulysses butterfly (Papilio ulysses). Naturalist Linnaeus named this species after Ulysses, a hero in the Homeric epic Odyssey. Below them is the Krishna peacock (Papilio krishna) first found in the mountains of the Krishna River in India. Its Latin name originated from the Sanskrit ”krishna”, meaning the eighth avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. It is mainly distributed in the Sichuan-Tibet region of China, India, Myanmar and Nepal.
The Pieridae on the left side of the picture is the famous Delias genus of Arfak Mountains of Indonesia. These butterflies are famous for their gorgeous colors. The purple spotted swallowtails (Graphium weiskei) on the bottom are also endemic to this region.
The small gossamer-winged butterflies are from Thailand and Japan, and the Danainae are from the Philippines.