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The Shinigami use Hell Butterflies for communication while they are on
missions and need to communicate with HQ (or vice versa).

Are Hell Butterflies living creatures or are somehow artificially created
(like miniature robots) by the Shinigami?


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2013-01-20T20:13:48.323
2094
2016-08-13T23:04:55.140
2015-06-11T20:01:56.697
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question
bleach
Are Hell Butterflies living creatures?


The true nature of the butterflies was never revealed in the manga. Take a
look at this page from chapter 59:

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CEV0y.jpg)

Here you can see Rikichi having troubles catching a butterfly that was trying
to fly away, also trying to lure it with a female butterfly. That suggests us
that the butterflies are at least living creatures (as far as you can describe
an inhabitant of Soul Society as "living"), and not "robots", because:

  * It's useless to try to lure a robot with a female robot
  * A robot could behave better, and there should be no problems with handling it. 

I would assume they are real butterflies that are being bred up in Soul
Society and somehow trained to perform their duties. Maybe they are somehow
different from normal butterflies (for example they could have been modified
by the 12th division), but since it wasn't stated anywhere, it's just a
speculation.


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2013-01-21T07:37:58.213
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2013-01-21T07:37:58.213
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I wouldn't say living, as far as Ichigo goes, but I think they are just as
alive as the rest of the Shinigami. It doesn't sound like too far of a stretch
for people of their caliber to have found a creature that does what it does
and made use of it. Maybe it's along the same lines as the Den Den Mushi in
One Piece.


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2013-07-04T04:06:57.747
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2013-07-04T04:06:57.747
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I think they are asking if hell butterflies are real..as in real life. There
are butterlies that look very similar to the hell butterfly in bleach. Their
purpose is revealed in the anime. They are a communication system. In real
life hell butterflies are black swallowtail butterflies


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