Meet The Orange Spotted Tiger,

a fairly attractive butterfly,

but what makes this one special is its cocoon, the orange-spotted tiger clearwing butterfly, (Mechanitis polymnia), lives in the jungles of Central and South America, from Mexico all the way to the Amazon rain-forests, it has a wingspan of 65 to 75 millimeters, but it is not the butterfly itself that gets it talked about, its pupae however are, in looks they appear to be, depending on how they are viewer either pure silver or gold, but of course they are not, they look just like elaborate jewelry hanging on the back of plant leaves, and even on the walls of houses in rural area, but unlike actual jewels, these shiny, metallic-looking chrysalises are not meant to draw attention, but distract predators and even discourage them from getting to close, similar to the yellow/black warning of many insects,

 “They are actually very hard to see in nature, given the way all the colors are reflected,” Dr Keith Willmott, one of the world’s leading tropical butterfly experts, explains. It is believed that the shiny, reflective cocoon does a good job of concealing the pupa, making it seem like something else – such as hanging drops of water or simple shafts of light- to predators, and can even scare some threats away, apparently, predators like birds, reptiles and giant spiders tend to run away when they detect the reflection of their own movement on the super-shiny chrysalis, mistaking it for a threat to themselves, The surreal-looking cocoon of the Mechanitis polymnia butterfly has spawned all kinds of fake facts online. There are photos of these awe-inspiring pupae captioned with all sorts of lies, like they contain actual metallic particles, or that empty cocoons were once used as currency. That may seem plausible to some people, but science does a great job of debunking such myths. First of all, the cocoons don’t contain any metals. They are made of chitin, a natural substance that gives some insects and crustaceans a shiny look. It’s also what most fish scales are made of. As for its potential as currency, that would have made sense if not for the fact that the cocoons actually lose their gold-like shine in just a few days, a week tops. “The butterflies are only in the pupal stage for around a week, depending on the species, afterwards they lose the metallic color,” Dr. Ryan Hill writes. “They lose their metallic color almost immediately,” Costa Rica native Luis Ricardo Murillo-Hiller told Earth Touch. “I have never seen or heard of somebody, in any place, using the pupae as currency, and actually, they are almost to unknown to [the average person].”

and they are not the only butterfly to have a cocoon that looks like a precious metal, the the orange-spotted tiger clearwing also has a jewel of a cocoon, Tithorea harmonia, or the Harmonia tiger wing, has very similar cocoons, as you can see in the video above, what wonders there are to see in nature, if you look.