Amazing Butterfly Facts

• Butterflies, also known as winged flowers, can taste with their feet and they can hear and smell with their antennae. 
• A butterfly cannot harm anything because it is unable to bite or chew.  It only has a tongue called a “proboscis” that curls and uncurls like a party blower to sip nectar.
• The name “butterfly” means “scale wing.”
• A butterfly’s feathery scales come in all shapes and colors.  The combination of veins and scales make the butterfly able to fly and glide.

In fact, we have learned a lot from these creatures.  Can you guess which insect may have inspired these inventions?

• gliders
• tunnels
• helicopters
• hammocks
• flashlights
• tents
• needles
• nets
• camouflage
• straws
• apartment houses

Butterfly Wings

There is another eason why butterfly wings are special.  Whether you are looking at the smallest butterfly (a dwarf blue), which is 1/2 inch in size, or the gigantic white birdwing butterfly (over 12 inches tall), every one is different.  The patterns on the butterfly wings are as individual and unique as snowflakes, there are no two that are exactly alike. 

To examine the butterfly wings, you will need a microscope or a magnifying glass. 

Making Your Own Magnifying Tool

If you don’t have a magnifying glass, how about making your own magnifying tool?  It’s actually very easy.  What you need is a clear plastic egg or trinket holder (the kind that comes out of toy machine), or a clear plastic soft drink bottle.  If you pour a little water into the bottom of one of these and then hold it over a bug or some of the words in a book, you will see them better.

On the lookout for Butterflies?

Another place to look for butterflies is in shrubs and trees where they often will go to form their chrysalis, which is the case that holds them as a pupa.  Butterflies also like to gather near mud holds to drink and to dance.  When the weather is bad, these delicate bugs take cover in the leaves of nearby trees or flowers.

Bug Riddle:  Who Am I?

I am one of the few insects that molt or shed my skin five times.  My small size is a mere 1/4 inch and makes it very easy for me to hide inside crevices and cracks.  I hunt for food at night where you lay your head.  Who Am I?

Answer:  gub deb (backwards)

Ladybug Gardens

Flower gardeners also like to have ladybugs in their gardens.  Why?

Because these pretty bugs will eat aphids, which are a menace to the flowers.  Another bug that can protect the flowers from pests is the praying mantis.  Gardners can order them too, through a nursery, seed catalog, or over the Internet. 

Praying mantises will eat most of the crop-damaging insects and keep your garden fairly bug-free.  As a matter of fact, if a praying mantis gets hungry enough, it will also eat its own babies and spouse!  Female praying mantises have been known to eat the head right off their men! 

Curiously, this doesn’t kill the unlucky bug.  Because of the way insect bodies work, they can survive without heads for some time, the only problem is that without a mouth, they can no longer eat and eventually die of starvation.  So, when someone warns you not to lose your head, just think what it might mean for a bug like the praying mantis!