Walk among hundreds of tropical butterflies at Natural History Museum's new exhibition

Visitors to the Natural History Museum’s latest exhibition are able to see butterflies hatch from their cocoons in a specially-created enclosure.

Sensational Butterflies offers the chance to walk among hundreds of butterflies and moths from Africa, South America, North America and Asia in all stages of the life cycle.

Butterfly house assistant Pablo Scott, who began working at the Museum as a volunteer, said: “Once you get the bug, you get the butterfly bug.

“Butterflies need three things: heat, light and humidity. So in this butterfly house we create that tropical environment.”

The enclosure contains tropical butterflies such as the swallowtail, blue morpho and the moon moth.

Each year, hundreds of tropical chrysalises arrive at Heathrow from all over the world destined for the Museum. In the wild, only 10 to 15 per cent of them will make this extraordinary transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly, but the success rate at the Museum is closer to 85 per cent.

Dr Blanca Huertas, curator of butterflies and moths at the Natural History Museum, said: “Sensational Butterflies is a rare chance to see these beautiful creatures in flight here in the city.”

The exhibition runs until September 11 2016 in South Kensington.