Flying high at the new Dubai Butterfly Garden

Flapping casually a few inches past my left shoulder, a startlingly huge butterfly lands upon a slice of pineapple, then nonchalantly opens and closes its wings to show off its dazzling iridescent blue markings.

Seconds later, it spreads its wings and flutters high above our heads, before settling gently on a surprised man’s baseball cap. Then it’s off again at high speed, floating merrily towards a group of women, before it has an abrupt change of heart and selects a pink flower for its landing pad.

This, I’m told, is a blue Morpho, one of the largest butterflies in the world, and one of thousands currently enthralling visitors at Dubai Butterfly Garden.

“At the moment, we have 26 different species of tropical butterfly, originating from Latin America, Asia and Africa,” says Ayman Ahmad, the project manager at Akar Landscaping Services & Agriculture, the company behind Dubai Butterfly Garden. “We aim to have about 15,000 butterflies living here at any one time,” he says.

Butterfly boffins will be excited to know there are fine examples of Papilio lowi (also known as the great yellow Mormon or Asian swallowtail), Hypolimnas bolina (the great eggfly) and even Parthenos sylvia (the clipper) fluttering around; for the rest of us, the park is a rare occasion to get up close and personal with some of nature’s daintiest creatures.

What’s more, unlike Dubai Miracle Garden next door, which is scheduled to close from June 1 to November 1 because of the hot weather, the butterfly park is able to remain open for visitors all year-round. This is because Dubai Butterfly Garden is the largest indoor butterfly garden in the world, and thanks to the latest high-tech cooling solutions, all 2,600 square metres of its enclosed area are kept at a comfortable 24°C, 365 days of the year.

Original article by Zoe Rawlins

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Flying high at the new Dubai Butterfly Garden