A spectacle never seen in Vitebsk before: millions of little butterflies covered the entire bridge with their bodies! Maybe it’s the first sign of a doomsday predicted for 2012?
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Zounds!
2nd
I wonder what caused this?
like from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – “it feels like walkin’ on biscuits… ” “these are no biscuits”
They’re not the Russian version of the monarch butterflies, are they?
Look like moths, not butterflies. But still….
Pesticide, probably.
I’ll take your butterflies (moths, or whatever…) over our storms of blood sucking mosquitos!
Apocalipsis is coming
its because of the fire and the high temperature!
poor butterflies
The comments in the original post say it was mayflies (short-living insects that live in water until mating).
“Adult mayflies are very short lived, surviving only one or two nights. During that time the adults mate in swarms in the air. They are also attracted to lights. Eggs are deposited while flying low over the water, or by dipping the abdomen on the water surface or some even submerge themselves and lay eggs underwater. Adult females lay eggs into water and often die on the water surface.”
Yep, those are definitely mayflies. They spend most of their life as larva living in the river. Eventually they all pupate and emerge as adults at the same time (it is believed that they use lunar cycles to synchronise). They fly upstream as a cloud desperately trying to mate. The females then deposit their eggs in the river and both males and females die soon after. Their adult life is so short in fact that they don’t even have a mouth as they don’t live long enough to need to eat!
… perhaps if they ate something, they’d live longer…?
perhaps.. but they don’t have mouths :’-(
Seriously, mayflies are nothing to write home about. It’s pretty unusual for them to congregate like that in an urban area, but here in the north-central U.S. where we’re between woods and prairie, people who live outside the city have mayflies mob their house for a week or so every year.
we get them here in Ottawa Canada every year, just like that
we get them here in Ottawa Canada every year, just like that
Hmmm. Definitely mayflies, the hatch out in very large numbers. I bet their shed skins are everywhere too.
You see the weather and the…nevermind!
Just Imagine…if these butterflies were color…it would have been SO beautiful
I was gonna say, those aren’t butterflies, they look like termite or ant alates (the winged forms), but others have explained, they are Mayflies.
common in southern France where they are called éphémères or one-day flies ( ephemeroptera )They live only a few hours actually, mating in the air and then falling .
But in Russia ??? Is your climate changing??
Yvvan
woow a strange image. I want to live there, and that moment
very unsually for belarus…
Oh, that’s something new. I thought Vitebsk is in Belarus and have never heard about the Russian one. Nice.
maybe those things are not butterflies,
in my country, those creatures will appear when he weather is getting cold, they looking for warm place like surround the lamp, or something heat. We always turn off the lamp so they won’t come into our house. we call they moth.
the beetle must wonder if it had reach the food heaven haha. lotsa food there