Did you know that butterflies need the warmth of the sun to enable them to fly?
Butterflies are cold-blooded and will not fly if the temperature is below 86 degrees.
Butterflies "taste" with their feet! Butterfly feet are actually tiny receptors which allow them to "taste" the food
that they are standing on. Butterflies don't have mouths that allow them to bite or chew. After tasting with
their feet they use a long straw like structure called a proboscis to drink nectar and juices. When not in use,
the proboscis remains coiled like a garden hose.
Did you know that butterflies' wings are actually transparent?
The iridescent scales, which overlap like shingles on a roof, give the wings the colors that we see.
Fact or Fiction? You can kill a butterfly if you touch its wings?
Fiction, you will not hurt a butterfly if you touch it, although you might rub off some of the color of its
wings.
Butterflies excrete a red liquid which is sometimes mistaken for blood it is actually meconium,
"pupal fluid" which is made up of waste material that is produced during the pupal stage.
Fact or Fiction? Birds think that monarchs are a tasty treat?
Fiction, once a bird has eaten a monarch it is definitely a reminder NOT to eat another one, the
milkweed that the monarch eats as a caterpillar has a toxic effect on the bird when the butterfly is
ingested.
True or false? caterpillars have bones?
False, caterpillars do NOT have bones, they have over 1,000 muscles in which they use to move
from place to place and they can move at a very quick pace.
Did you know that the butterfly doesn't spin a cocoon?
You will often hear and read that the adult butterfly emerges from its cocoon. In actuality,
moths spin cocoons of silken threads, and caterpillars shed their final skin to reveal a pupa.
The outer skin of this pupa hardens to form a chrysalis which protects and hides the amazing
transformation that is occurring inside.
Did you know that a caterpillar grows to about 27,000 times the size it was when it first emerged
from its egg?
If a human baby weighed 9 pounds at birth and grew at the same rate as a caterpillar, it would weigh
243,000 pounds when fully grown. Because the caterpillar's skin doesn't grow along with it as ours does,
it must periodically shed the skin as it becomes too tight. Most caterpillars molt five times before entering
the pupa stage.
Fun Butterfly Facts
Here are some fun butterfly facts to amaze your friends! Enjoy!
·Butterflies range in size from a tiny 1/8 inch to a huge almost 12 inches.
· It takes about one hundred Monarch Butterflies to weigh an ounce
· Butterflies can see red, green, and yellow.
· The top butterfly flight speed is 20 miles per hour.
· Butterflies can reach altitudes of 10,000 feet when they are flying.
· A butterfly can lay up to 500 eggs.
· Butterflies flap their wings quite slowly, usually from 5-20 beats per second.
· Monarch butterflies journey from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of about 2,000
miles and return to the north again in the spring.
· There are about 24,000 species of butterflies.
· The longest lifetime of the adult butterfly is 9-10 months.
· Butterflies have their skeletons on the outside of their bodies, called the exoskeleton. This protects
the insect and keeps water inside their bodies so they don’t dry out.
· Many caterpillars are covered with stinging hairs which carry a toxin that can be quite painful to
humans if touched.
·The chrysalises (pupae) of some butterflies are capable of producing weak sounds to scare off
potential enemies. They do this by flexing and rubbing together body segment membranes.
