The blue fluttering wings of a Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly, newly emerged from a chrysalis, are inside a cup at Moorpark College Zoo.
Each wing is about the size of a thumb fingernail and flashes a cornflower blue when open.
They were thought to be extinct for 11 years until a small number, just 69, were discovered on military land in San Pedro.
"You could argue that these were the rarest butterfly in the world," said Jana Johnson, who started the Butterfly Project at the Moorpark College Zoo and has worked for nearly two decades to bring them back to thriving.
From 69 butterflies, they have reared over 60,000, with between a third and a half released back to the wild in their natural habitat. The butterflies are more than just beautiful; they may be small, but they play a critical role in our ecosystem.
"There is the butterfly effect in terms of these butterflies are pollinators; they're also a food source for all sorts of things, such as birds," said Johnson.
"Also, planet Earth is our spaceship. This is where we're living in space, and as far as I know, we don't have a backup spaceship. All the species are the rivets in the spaceship. How many rivets can you take out of the spaceship before everything goes? I don't know the answer to that. I'm holding in my one rivet. I hope other people are holding in rivets, too, so that we can go forward and our kids can have a planet and our grandkids can have a planet that's good for humans," she said.
February to May is the butterflies' mating cycle, and butterflies are being introduced in a wooden-framed mini habitat, as Johnson hopes she’s set the right romantic mood.
And if that works, so begins a fragile and long process. Females bury their eggs on a very specific plant, and then the larvae begin to feed upon the plant.
You can see that these plants look very chewed, and that's a larva right there at the end of my finger," she said of the tiny speck which will grow to around the size of a sprinkle or TicTac.
The next stage is where the magic happens.
"This is where we house our pupa. And when they get in there, they break down to the cellular level. Ours do not retain any tissue. They have no organs. They cannot feed. They cannot drink. And they can stay in that chrysalis for up to five years," explained Johnson.
She takes a moment to reflect on the impressive metamorphosis.
"There is complete metamorphosis in other groups [of creatures], but I'm always impressed by it, and I also find it very inspirational. I was a single mom, and it wasn't always pretty, and then I would think about the caterpillar going into its chrysalis, and it's breaking down to the cellular level. It is a mess, and it might take a hot minute, but what comes out is beautiful...if you can hang in there."
It’s a long-running program, involving Moorpark College students, volunteers, and dedicated biologists — and maybe these butterflies can also teach us all a thing or two about our own metamorphosis.
