Search This Blog

Sunday 6 October 2013

Butterfly

The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

Butterflies are distributed worldwide except Antarctica, totalling some 18,500 species.


There are over 2,000 species of butterflies in the rainforests of South America.

There is a butterfly found in Brazil that has the smell and color of a chocolate.

Some butterflies live for nine months but most live for only about two or three weeks.

In 2008, research showed that butterflies may remember things they learned as caterpillars.

A butterfly can see the colors red, green, and yellow.

Most butterflies have four eyes, but the caterpillars from which they develop have twelve.

The top butterfly flight speed is normally 12 miles per hour.


The fastest flying butterfly is the Monarch, which has been clocked with a speed as high as 17 miles per hour.

Monarch butterflies migrate more than 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico in autumn. The following spring, their descendants three generations on make the trip back.

Most birds dislike the taste of monarch butterflies because they still contain poisons from when they were caterpillars. (Monarch caterpillars' favorite meal is poisonous milkweed.)

The nymphalid butterfly, which is found in tropical Asia uses mimicry, resembling a dead leaf when it closes its wings, in order to avoid predators.

A butterfly has to have a body temperature greater than 86 degrees Fahrenheit or 30 degrees Celsius to be able to fly.

Their wings are made of very thin layers of chitin, which act as solar panels and soak up heat from the sun.

Butterflies can drink but not chew solid food. They have a curled-up proboscis through which they suck up nectar.


Butterflies taste with their feet.

Butterflies and bees need salt to survive, so they sometimes drink the tears of crocodilians such as caimans and other animals in regions where the mineral is scarce.

Butterflies are very territorial. They actively fight and chase other butterflies out of their territory.

Pacific Grove, California, calls itself “Butterfly Town” and has an annual butterfly parade.

City Ordinance number 352 in Pacific Grove makes it a misdemeanor to kill or threaten a Monarch butterfly.

The wingspan of the world's largest butterfly, the female Queen Alexandria's Birdeing from Papua New Guinea of up to 12 inches.

The smallest wingspan is believed to be the endangered Sinai Baton Blue from Egypt. Its wingspan is less than half an inch.

Besides writing such novels as Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov was a keen lepidopterist who discovered the butterfly known as Nabokov’s Pug in 1943.

Source Greatfacts.com, Daily Express

No comments:

Post a Comment