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All about Butterflies
This site is also about my favorite creatures: butterflies!!!
I am including in this page some of the facts and figures that I have gathered about them..
BUTTERFLIES are insects comprising more than 100,000 species worldwide. They belong to second largest insect order, Lepidoptera. The name, derived from the Greek lepis,meaning 'scale', and pteron,meaning 'wing', refers to the distinctive covering of minute scales, overlapping like shingles, on the wings.
They develop through the four stages of metamorphosis: EGG; larva, or CATERPILLAR; PUPA, or chrysalis; and ADULT.
Butterflies range in size from a tiny 1/8 inch to a huge almost 12 inches.
Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.
The top butterfly flight speed is 12 miles per hour. Some moths can fly 25 miles per hour!
Butterflies need the warmth of the sun to enable them to fly. They are cold-blooded and will not fly if the temperature is below 50 degrees.
They have a significant ecological and economic importance. Their larvae transform millions of tons of plant matter into animal matter and wastes, and are eaten by other animals or eventually recycled into plant matter. A few of them are directly beneficial, notably the silkworm, Bombyx Mori. Many of them also control weed plants. Flower-visiting adults also help in the pollination of many flowering plants.
Butterflies "taste" with their feet! Butterfly feet are actually tiny receptors which allow them to "taste" the food that they are standing on. Their taste sensors are located in the feet. All butterflies have six legs and feet. In some species such as the monarch, the front pair of legs remains tucked up under the body most of the time, and are difficult to see.
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.
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This page was last updated on: March 29, 2005
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