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)

A Host Plant For Butterflies

Host plants serve as incubating stations for butterflies and moths, places where the females can lay eggs. 

When butterflies, these beautifully winged wonders, move on to the next stage of metamorphosis and become larvae or caterpillars, they proceed to eat their way through their former nursery to fuel their prodicious growth, using opposable toothed mandibles that can only be seen with a magnifying glass.

As the caterpillar grows, it molts its outer layer of skin from four to six times, much like a snake.  Once the caterpillar has eaten its fill, it casts off its final skin and enters the third stage, the pupl phase, where it generally disappers into a case.  That case is known as a chrysalis in the case of butterflies and a cocoon if the pupa is a moth.

A magnificent winged adult emerges anywhere from one week to several months later, depending on the species.  Once fully emerged, the adult will hang upside-down by its legs for several hours until its soft wrinkled wings fully unfold and harden for flight.

Caterpillars Diet

While adudlt butterflies and moths generally find a variety of nectar-producing plants appealing, caterpillars typically have very specialized diets.  For instance fodder for the sleepy orange caterpillar consists mostly of senna.  Monarch caterpillars feed solely on milkweed, also known as butterfly weed, while cinnabar moth caterpillars eat ragwort.

Both these plants not only supply monarch and cinnabar caterpillars with sustenance, but they also increase their survival odds because they are poisonous to many of their predators.

Caterpillars are such picky eaters that butterflies are very particular about  where they lay their eggs.  And how do female butterflies know which plants to use as hosts for their young?  Special taste receptorslocatedin the feeet of butterflies both sense sweet liquids and allow many species to “feet taste” the leaves, ascertaining the plant’s suitability as a host. 

Moths have similar taste receptors in their antennae.  In addition, both butterflies and moths identify plants by their shapes, colors, and odors  Still, favored host plants for any given species may differ from place to place because taste preferences can vary from one region to the next.

19 Plants That Attract Butterflies

“Butterflies need food and places to lay their eggs.  Help them help in turn feed our plants with pollenation!  Plant these plants to give our fluttery winged friends a helping “wing” to fly!”

The monarch butterfly is sometimes called the “milkweed butterfly” because its larvae eat the plant.  In fact, milkweed is the only thing the larvae can eat!  If you’d like to attract monarchs to your garden, you can try planting milkweed (if you live in the right area).

Adult female Monarchs lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves.  These eggs hatch, depending on temperature, in three to twelve days.  After awhile, the caterpillars attach themselves head down to a convenient twig, they shed their outer skin and begin the transformation into a pupa (or chrysalis), a process which is completed in a matter of hours.

The pupa resembles a waxy, jade vase and becomes increasingly transparent as the process progresses.  The caterpillar completes the miraculous transformation into a beautiful adult butterfly in about two weeks.

The butterfly finally emerges from the now transparent chrysalis.

It inflates its wings with a pool of blood it has stored in its abdomen.  When this is done, the monarch expels any excess fluid and rests.

The butterfly waits until its wings stiffen and dry before it flies away to start the cycle of life all over again.

Eastern populations winter in Florida, along the coast of Texas, and in Mexico, and return to the north in spring.  Monarch butterflies follow the same migration patterns every year.  During migration, huge numbers of butterflies can be seen gathered together.

Nope, those orange things to the left are not autumn leaves… they’re hundreds of Monarch butterflies!

Most predators have learned that the monarch butterfly makes a poisonous snack.  The toxins from the Monarch’s milkweed diet have given the butterfly this defense.  In either the caterpillar or butterfly stage the Monarch needs no camouflage because it takes in toxins from the milkweed and is poisonous to predators.  Many animals advertise their poisonous nature with bright colors… just like the monarch!

19 Plants That Butterflies Love

1. Aster
2. Borage
3. Butterfly weed
4. Chives
5. Coreopsis
6. Day Lily
7. False Indigo
8. Heliotrope
9. Hollyhock
10. Lantana
11. Marigold
12. Nasturtium
13. Parsley
14. Pearly Everlasting
15. Purple Cornflower
16. Sedum
17. Sweet Alyssum
18. White Clover
19. Wild Bergamot
20. Milkweed

Help the Butterflies!  Enjoy them in your garden!

-Wings To Fly