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New Zealand’s Premier Butterfly House

Butterfly Creek is home to one of the largest tropical butterfly houses in New Zealand. Our butterflies are imported as pupae from butterfly farms all around the world, but primarily from Asia and Central America. The butterfly house is temperature controlled to approximately 28 degrees celsius and has high humidity to replicate the conditions of the butterflies’ natural environment. Inside the tropical butterfly house you’ll also find, finches, water dragons and variety of fish.

Immerse yourself among the living butterflies, watch them flutter around you and even land on you! Butterflies are attracted to bright colours such as red, blue, orange and surprisingly, white.

Butterfly on girl

See our butterfly release

We regularly import a variety of tropical butterfly pupae from countries such as Costa Rica and the Philippines. After hatching, these butterflies are released into our tropical butterfly house which you can see everyday at our 10am butterfly encounter. For full info on our Daily Encounters click here. The average lifespan for most butterfly species is just two to five weeks, but some can last months. The species of butterflies that we have in the butterfly house can vary from shipment to shipment, but some of our more regular species are pictured below.

Did you know…

  • There are an estimated 18,000 species of butterflies worldwide.
  • Butterflies are found in a variety of habitats worldwide, including desert, wetlands, grassland, forest and alpine.  The only continent butterflies aren’t on is Antarctica.
  • Butterflies can see ultraviolet light, which humans cannot.  This allows them to see ultraviolet markings on flowers and other butterflies.
  • Butterfly wings are made up of scales so tiny that they can only be seen under a microscope.
  • The patterns on a butterfly’s wings can be used for camouflage, to warn predators that the butterfly is poisonous, to distract predators and to help communicate with butterflies of the same species.
  •  Butterflies have a liquid diet.  They taste with their feet but use their proboscis, which is like a straw, to drink nectar or other liquid sustenances.

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