Butterfly Greenhouse Garden, NCYU Insect Museum (新嘉大昆蟲館 蝴蝶溫室花園)

National Chiayi University opened its insect museum on the Lantan campus in early 2008. According to an Epoch Times dispatch dated 1 February 2008, the building cost NT$50 million and took one year and two months to build. The opening ceremony was held in front of the museum in the presence of city representatives, legislators and officials of the Council of Agriculture; the university president then led the guests through the galleries and into the butterfly greenhouse.

The newspaper presents the greenhouse as the first in Taiwan to keep live butterflies. At the opening, 600 butterflies were released at once, of more than twenty species according to the text. Staff planned to add about a hundred adults or pupae every week: a butterfly lives three to four months, which was expected to mean roughly 5,700 individuals released each year. The museum was conceived for the university's teaching and research, for public visits and as a science education centre for primary and secondary schools.

An article on the Taiwanese authorities' agricultural portal, written about eighteen months after the opening and updated in 2023, repeats the description of the country's first live butterfly greenhouse garden and states that the university had entrusted its operation to a private company. Travel guides published in 2022 and 2026 still describe it as running, under the name "New NCYU Insect Museum" (新嘉大昆蟲館).

The greenhouse is the museum's most recognisable part: a glass sphere standing, according to the 2008 dispatch, at the entrance to the Lantan campus, where it catches the eye of passers-by. An article from the agricultural authorities describes the building as a semicircular structure in the form of a glass sphere; a 2026 travel guide speaks of a large transparent bubble designed around butterfly ecology and habitat.

Inside, the dispatch describes a gently sloping walkway running through the centre that links the aquatic insect area on the first level to the insect resource industry area on the second. Along the route come rest platforms, a waterfall and water features, in a setting that recalls the primary forest of Taiwan's middle and lower elevations. The 2026 guide mentions a circular path and warns that heat and humidity can be high in summer.

The garden is planted with host plants for the caterpillars and nectar plants for the adults, and the butterfly species change with the seasons. At the opening the press counted more than twenty species, including the 大白斑蝶 and the 小纹金斑蝶. The 2009 article names, among some twenty species, the 黑點大白斑蝶, given as the largest danaine (斑蝶) in Taiwan, together with the 玉帶鳳蝶, the 琉球青斑蝶 and the 無尾鳳蝶. A pupae display case lets visitors watch adults emerge.

Outside the greenhouse, the museum shows more than three hundred specimen displays of insects from Taiwan and elsewhere, a rotating column on which over a thousand butterflies of three species (摩爾佛蝶, 綠鳥翼蝶 and 紅鳥翼蝶) form a double helix, 1:14-scale insect models made by Italian designers, an aquatic insect section and a live insect area with guided talks.

The museum stands at the entrance to the Lantan campus in Chiayi. A 2026 travel guide notes guided tours of about an hour, with no booking needed, and live insect presentations at set times. According to the museum website quoted by that guide, butterflies are most active from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on sunny days, and more numerous in spring and autumn than in winter; the greenhouse can be hot and humid in summer.

The visit pairs naturally with the university's coffee school (嘉大咖啡學園) and its farm-products shop, next to the museum according to the same guide, or with a walk to Lantan Reservoir, near which Wikipedia places this campus.