Imagine sucking up a drink through your
tongue. You wouldn’t need a straw to drink soda pop. You would just stick your
tongue in and slurp.
This is how most butterflies eat. They stick
their tongues into flowers and suck up sweet juices. Butterflies have long,
hollow tongues. The shortest tongues are less than an inch long. The longest
tongues are several inches long.
WHY DO BUTTERFLIES HAVE COLORFUL WINGS?
Colorful wings help butterflies find each other.
Often male and female butterflies have different colors or patterns on their
wings. Butterflies can see colors and patterns.
Colored wings help some butterflies hide from birds
and other enemies. Some butterflies have spots on their wings that look like
big eyes. The “eyes” scare enemies away.
Some brightly colored butterflies, such as monarchs,
taste really bad to birds that try to eat them. Birds learn not to eat these
butterflies. Other butterflies have a simpler trick: They look like bad-tasting
butterflies. Monarchs and viceroys are both colored orange and black. Viceroys
taste good, but birds leave them alone because viceroys are the same color as
monarchs.
WHAT DO BUTTERFLIES EAT?
Butterflies suck up flower juices called nectar.
Some suck tree sap and juices from rotting fruit. Some males suck up salts from
mud puddles or from decaying animals. Some adults do not eat at all.
Many butterflies help plants reproduce. They pick up and
carry pollen grains from flower to flower while they are feeding. Pollen grains
are the male sex cells of plants. The pollen fertilizes the plant.
STRANGE NOSES AND TONGUES
Butterflies can smell, but they do not have noses. They
use two antennae on top of their heads for smelling.
Butterflies can also taste. Their sense of taste
comes from little hairs on their feet.
WHERE DO BUTTERFLIES LIVE?
Butterflies live in almost every part of the world
except the South Pole and the oceans. Most butterflies live among flowers in
sunny fields and on hillsides.
More kinds of butterflies live in the tropics than
anywhere else. The tropics are places that are warm all year round.
WHAT DO BUTTERFLIES DO IN WINTER?
Some kinds of butterflies hibernate during the
winter. Hibernation is a kind of deep sleep. The insects do not need to eat
when they are hibernating.
Other kinds of butterflies go to warm places for
the winter. The painted lady butterfly lives in Europe and Alaska during the
summer. It flies to North Africa and Mexico for the winter.
The monarch butterfly lives in the United States and
southern Canada during the summer. In the fall, monarchs fly south to Mexico or
California. A monarch butterfly may fly more than 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers).
They start flying north in spring. Most of them die along the way. But the
females lay eggs. New monarchs that hatch from the eggs finish the trip north.
CATERPILLARS ARE BABY BUTTERFLIES
Butterflies start out as eggs. Butterflies lay their
eggs on leaves. The egg hatches into a caterpillar with a tube-shaped body. The
caterpillar eats leaves, buds, or flowers of plants. Caterpillars eat a lot and
grow fast. Some caterpillars harm plants.
When a caterpillar is full size, it goes into
another stage called a chrysalis. Caterpillars attach themselves to something
solid before becoming a chrysalis.
The caterpillar inside the chrysalis changes into a
butterfly. Some butterflies make the change in one week. Some butterflies take
years to change.
When the change is complete, the adult
butterfly splits the chrysalis. The insect unfolds its wings and pumps blood
and air into them. It spreads out the wings until they dry and harden. The
beautiful butterfly then flies off to slurp nectar from flowers. Most butterflies
live only one or two weeks.
BUTTERFLY RELATIVES
Butterflies are closely related to moths, another type
of insect. One difference between butterflies and moths is how their antennae
look. Butterflies have knobs called clubs on the tips of their antennae. Moths
do not.
Many kinds of moths have dull gray or brown
wings. Most butterflies have wings with colorful patterns. In addition, most
moths fly at night. Most butterflies are active during the day.