The butterfly pictured here is a captive. Live butterfly exhibits have become very popular in the United States, for obvious reasons. Children love butterflies, adults love butterflies and museums find them easy to raise and maintain - everybody wins. Except perhaps the individual butterflies - if you look closely, you can see thehuman fingerprint on this insect's hindwing.

This happy circumstance is also good for the wild butterflies - people who used to go into the rain forest and capture live butterflies, or plunder their eggs and chrysalises now can be set to work on butterfly farms, thereby sparing wild populations, and providing much needed jobs for many impoverished regions.

Family Nymphalidae - Brushfoots or brush-footed butterflies encompass approximately 3,000 species worldwide, of which 160 or so live in or visit North America. This is a very diverse family of butterflies, and they occur everywhere except the polar ice caps. Their unifying characteristic is the reduced forelegs of both males and females. The habit of holding the forelegs close to the body is shared with many other insects, including some bumblebees, flies, bugs and beetles.