Case in point: You may have seen a spooky story about a mysterious UFO hovering over a Florida swamp “in broad daylight… just outside the Bermuda Triangle.” Just outside the Bermuda Triangle, folks!
But wait a second. How unidentified is this flying object anyway?
I mean, after all, every now and then, humans really do witness truly strange things in the skies above our heads that are difficult to understand or reconcile.
Other times, people simply get carried away by flaws in Google’s data, conjuring up UFO conspiracies for things that already have perfectly plausible explanations.
Which brings us back to that mysterious UFO hovering over the swampy grass of Ochopee, Florida.
“An eagle-eyed Google Maps user has reported a mysterious ‘UFO sighting’ in the skies above a Florida swamp,” The Sun reports.
“Even when you get close, it’s difficult to define exactly what the object is.”
Part of the evidence for this is that the UFO is only visible at a frozen moment in time – if you move its virtual location to where the cameras captured the next image, it is no longer visible (which is what you would expect from a butterfly’s erratic flight).
I think we know that this image, which was captured in 2011, so is hardly a cliché example of suspected UFO detection, is in fact a butterfly.
I’m no lepidopterist (that’s a fancy word for a moth and butterfly scientist), but given the appearance and habitat, this mysterious UFO could be a swallowtail, perhaps one like this one: the Palamedes swallowtail (Papilio palamedes), which is found in marshy areas, including those in Florida!
Truly amazing to see, but decidedly terrestrial in origin; and while they are unmistakably flying objects, they are almost definitely not extraterrestrial.
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