Take wing with the butterflies at London museum

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - If you have ever dreamed about what it's like to be a butterfly, then flutter over to the "Amazing Butterflies" exhibition at London's Natural History museum before August 17.

The exhibition gives visitors the chance to "shrink to the size of a caterpillar", find their way through a maze dotted with dangerous sticky plants and spiders, forage for food before emerging from your chrysalis to take flight on a zip slide aerial runway.

The exhibition's star attraction is the butterfly house, where visitors can walk among hundreds of live moths and butterflies of every size, shape and color as they flit from one exotic plant to the next. You can even see butterflies emerge from their pupa in the exhibition's very own hatchery.

"There are about 40 or 50 sorts of butterflies, they are from Africa mainly, South America, Southeast Asia as well," Exhibition Developer Alex Gaffikin told Reuters on Friday.

There is also a butterfly garden, where visitors can get tips on which plants to nurture at home if they would like to attract butterflies native to Britain and seasonal visitors.

The exhibition is aimed at families with school children, but has also proven a hit with older visitors as well.

"Our target audiences in the museum, people we're trying to attract are families with children from five to 11," Gaffikin said. "We're also getting grannies coming and loving the butterflies."

Gaffikin said Amazing Butterflies was organized partly to attract busy parents looking for ways to entertain their children over the school holidays and has seen some 90,000 visitors since it opened in April.

"We did a sort of evaluation with the museum's visitors on what would interest them the most and butterflies scored really highly," she said. "The kids fell in love with the butterflies."

Alongside the slide, the maze, the house and the garden, the museum has also put together a lively, educational Internet package on the subject.

Keen lepidopterists can search the site for pictures of their favorite creatures, read about conservation issues and be kept up to date on all the hatching, matching and dispatching going on at the museum.

"It's one of the most popular exhibitions we've had in years," Gaffikin said.

Amazing Butterflies

Natural History Museum ( www.nhm.ac.uk )

London

Until August 17th

Adults: 5 pounds ($9.96)

Children: 3.50 pounds

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

($1=.5020 Pound)