Winged Gems : Insects: A new walk-through, living butterfly exhibit at San Diego Wild Animal Park features 18 distinct species. It is intended to awe tourists with its sheer beauty.

Standing on the corner, watching all the butterflies.

Those ephemeral, rainbow-hued wisps of flight hardly conjure up the macho-jungle image of the San Diego Wild Animal Park as symbolized by its horned rhino logo.

But, beginning today, visitors to the world-renowned animal preserve can soak in the beauty of the winged world that is the province of the second-largest order of insects.

In a special 10-week experiment, the park will test whether butterflies can provoke the same awe and wonder that patrons regularly express over the muscularity of gorillas and tigers, or the lope of giraffes.

Among the hoped-for stars: the orange wanderer; the birdwing butterfly, a bright purple-and-white species whose wing span can approach the diameter of a dinner plate; the Idea Leuconde, a white-with-black stripe wonder whose flight appears like a parachute, and the scarlet Mormon, with black-and-red wings.

Depending on the reaction, the new glass-and-steel structure that the butterflies are temporarily “renting” from its main occupants-to-be, hummingbirds, will eventually be replicated elsewhere so that there will be a permanent “Butterfly House,” complete with a supporting cast of 2,000 tropical plants and trees.

‘I want these absolute beauties to stop people in their tracks, to turn heads, to bring that ‘amazement factor’ which is key to making the exhibit work,” said Bill Toone, curator of birds and--at least temporarily--butterflies.

“I can’t wait for the first beautiful blue butterfly to land on the nose of a visitor,” added Toone, whose tireless work in saving the California condor from extinction helped plant the image of that huge bird in the public mind.

“Now I want to see if we can do the same thing with something little and delicate, because once we get the visitor’s attention, we can educate them” about insects and rain forest protections.

The exhibit, with its broad decks, railings, and corners, encourages visitors to stop, lean back and watch the beauties.

And Toone assures everyone that butterflies are harmless, so his word to all visitors: don’t swat them.

Some things you always wanted to know about butterflies, free, courtesy of Bill Toone:

There are more than 120,000 identified species of butterflies, or Lepidoptera, as they’re scientifically known. Depending on which entomologist you talk to, that number represents anywhere from less than a third to more than half of all the species suspected to inhabit all corners of the Earth.

How did they get their common name? Why not “flutter-by” instead?

Well, the first keen English-speaking observers noted that the winged creatures deposit a tiny residue of yellow film as they first emerge from their cocoon, or pupa stage, and unfold their wings. The film--meconium liquid that helps lubricate the virgin wings--resembles melted butter.

But not everyone speaks English, of course. In Japan, they’re known as cho-cho, and that melodious name has charmed generations of Japanese for centuries to coo over butterflies. In fact, Toone says the Butterfly House in the Tokyo suburb of Tama is the most spectacular he has seen.

Although there may be more than 100,000 species, those from tropical locales have the undisputed advantage when it comes to color and in wowing zoo visitors and scaring away birds and associated predators who learn that bright colors often equate with bad taste--literally.

“Absolutely the most beautiful,” Toone said. “The tropical rain forests are nutrient-rich, which means they have a greater biomass, which means a greater diversity of animals, which means the greater the chance of something more dramatic” in terms of color.

Further, Toone points out that visual sight lines are short in the dense rain forests, unlike, say, those on the Great Plains, where, on a clear day, an animal can see for miles and its prey better be able to move fast and blend in with the background.

“In the tropics, it’s so dense that just finding a mate can be difficult,” Toone laughed. “So you can get away with being more spectacular.”

Butterflies do find mates, however, Toone reassured. Some, in fact, emerge from pupa without digestive tracts, so they don’t--can’t, really--even eat, but simply hustle to find a mate, lay millions of eggs, then die.

In stocking a butterfly house, you just can’t buy a box of pupae and let the contents eventually fly away. The average life cycle of a butterfly is less than a month.

So Toone has to arrange for a steady supply over 10 weeks this summer, for the most colorful species that he can get, for those known to fly slowly and “show off” in an exhibit, and--most important of all--for suppliers who aren’t earning their wings by stripping the insects from rain forests.

In fact, an expedition to Papua New Guinea several years ago persuaded him that a butterfly house in San Diego could be more than a pipe dream. His original interest was stimulated by his then-fiancee after she took a wine-tasting trip to Australia and saw the famous butterfly house in Melbourne.

The Papua New Guinea Insect Farming and Trading Agency has cultivated a group of former farmers not to slash and burn the rain forest but to replant denuded areas with tropical foliage that attracts butterflies. The insects lay their eggs on plants in these “butterfly farms,” and the farmers later harvest about 80% of the pupae for sale to butterfly houses around the world. (Of four or five houses in the United States, the best-known is in Georgia’s Calloway Gardens.)

In that way, none of the butterflies fluttering through the remaining rain forests are harmed, and their numbers are augmented by the 20% of pupae left free to emerge from the butterfly farms. Similar operations harvest pupae in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Thailand and Malaysia.

“In this way, the money we’re paying for butterflies is going to support protection of the rain forest,” Toone said. The Papua New Guinea agency now earns $300,000 annually from its insect farming.

Further, a butterfly taken directly from its pupa stage into captivity “is much better for display--he hasn’t had his wings beaten up or scarred by birds or other butterflies.”

Toone needs about 1,000 pupae a week for the summer. He’s arranged for weekly shipments by Federal Express, where Toone, assistant bird curator David Rimlinger and Butterfly House keeper Jan Kaufman-Fall quickly hang the pupae onto Styrofoam or wooden rods and place them into “emerging boxes.”

“We’ll have about 18 distinct species represented, all as colorful as we can get,” Toone said, adding that the cost averages out to about $3.75 per butterfly.

The park will consider its own farming operation only if and when the butterflies are clearly here to stay.

The temporary Butterfly House can barely be seen from the rest of the Wild Animal Park, so lush are the tropical plantings both inside and around its periphery. Almost 2,000 plants, most of them nectars which attract butterflies and hummingbirds, will envelop visitors as they meander through the 36-foot-high, 4,400-square-foot structure near the exit from the monorail.

The temperature in the interior will be kept at 85 degrees. Strategic placement of the plants at walkway level will ensure that the butterflies will hover around visitors as they feed off the nectars--and dance even closer to those guests who wear bright colors, such as Hawaiian prints.

“Beauty, education, conservation,” Toone said. “We can do it all.”