elliot's random rabbitholes

glasswing butterflies

we could all be a little more transparent

October 02, 2025

it's true. i've fallen down another rabbithole. a few nights ago, i discovered the glasswing butterfly, or the greta oto.

elliot's avatar
elliot
5mo

i went down a rabbithole about cool butterflies and translucent animals last night... i dont even remember how

like i said in my post, i don't remember how i came across this, but that means that now i get to retrace my steps.

it seems like this all got started when i was testing out a few ai models with kagi assistant, especially after the new minor update to deepseek.

now, i was trying to think of some sort of interesting research question to ask the AI, and I must've somehow thought of butterflies. probably because i have this image of a teal butterfly on my website, that I think looks quite cool.

i wanted to put an image here, but i'm having issuessss lol, so if you want to see it just go to my website:

Elliot Hopkins
https://elliothopkins.com/

so i asked my ai the following:

what is the prettiest blue butterfly species in the world? provide links to pictures or articles about them. i specifically am interested if there are any teal blue / green butterflies

i think i was specifically wondering if a teal butterfly, like the one on my website, was actually possible... spoiler alert, it probably isn't, at least in most lighting conditions :(

... but I did get some good names about other cool blue butterflies (like the blue morpho)

anyways, i think i must've started asking follow ups about the coolest butterflies in general, and well, that's where i heard about the glasswing butterfly

and well... glasswing butterflies look really cool, just see for yourself:

elliot's avatar
elliot
5mo

@gork look

super epic glasswing butterfly. a butterfly with a translucent wingsuper epic glasswing butterfly. a butterfly with a translucent wingsuper epic glasswing butterfly. a butterfly with a translucent wing

they are stunning.

i continued to look at the wikipedia and pages with info and facts about glasswing butterflies, and especially, i looked through a lot of random pictures of glasswings

i was very curious how they are able to have such beautiful transparent wings, and if you are to, i want to recommend this amazing video to you from this channel which i hadn't heard of before called "deep look" from PBS and KQED

here's the video:

ok i hope you enjoyed hearing about glasswing butterflies, stay tuned for more random rabbitholes in the future? maybe??

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