Curiosities about butterflies

Author: Laura McKinney
Date Of Creation: 4 August 2021
Update Date: 5 November 2024
Anonim
10 Amazing Facts About Butterflies
Video: 10 Amazing Facts About Butterflies

Content

Throughout your life you will see hundreds of butterflies in fields, forests or even in the city. They belong to the family of lepidopterans, most flyers. Butterflies, unlike many other insects, are a species that does not repel humans. In fact, on the contrary, we are able to admire the beauty of their wings and we can spend a long time just watching them.

Present all over the world, butterflies are very popular creatures. For this reason, at PeritoAnimal, we present this article with several trivia about butterflies that you will surely love. Good reading!

Characteristics of butterflies

Butterflies are atropods of the Insecta class and Lepidoptera order, which has 34 superfamilies with an immense variety of species. You older fossils already found demonstrate that they existed for at least 40 or 50 million years. Present in practically all over the world, they just cannot be found in Antarctica.


Maybe butterflies make you fall in love with them for their abilities, vibrant colors or your mere presence that beautifies the whole environment, but there are many aspects of your life that you may not be aware of. Here we present some fun facts about butterflies focusing on their characteristics:

  • They are animals with great sensitivity and their sense of smell and touch are in the antennae of butterflies.
  • The sizes of butterflies vary widely, from small 3 millimeters to about 30 centimeters.
  • Most species of recorded butterflies are nightly, although the best known only fly during the day, in sunlight.
  • The colors of the butterflies work as a kind of RG of these animals. It is through them that the rest of nature's insects know their sex and the family to which they belong.
  • At day butterflies evolved from the nocturnal ones.
  • It is the second order animal with more species, that is, there is an unimaginable variety.
  • To reach the nectar of flowers, the butterflies extract their mouth as if it were a straw.
  • The eyes have between 6 thousand and 12 thousand individual lenses, in addition, their color range only reaches green, red and yellow.
  • If your wings are unable to see the sun, they become incapable of flying.
  • They look delicate, but can reach speeds between 8 and 20 kilometers per hour and even some species reach 50 km/h.
  • The wings are formed by membranes covered with scales, which allow them to be thermally regulated.
  • Caterpillars feed on leaves, flowers, stalks, fruits, roots, but when they become butterflies, they only feed on pollen, spores, fungi and nectar.
  • Some species of butterflies are important plant pollinators, while others are even considered pests as their larvae can cause damage to agriculture and trees.
  • Some butterflies have developed symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects, as with some species of ants.

In this other article we explain everything about butterfly breeding. And in the video below, learn all about symbiosis:


Curiosities about the behavior of butterflies

If you want to know everything about the butterfly, continuing with more fun facts about butterflies, the reproduction and life cycle of these animals are worth mentioning:

  • Mating can last between 20 minutes up to several hours.
  • The butterfly's life cycle has four stages: egg, larva, pupa and butterfly. Each of these stages, as well as the butterfly's life expectancy, varies by species.
  • O procession of butterflies I'ts very interesting. Males make a reconnaissance flight in search of females, drawing their attention through different movements in the air and spreading pheromone. In turn, females respond to the call by releasing their own pheromones, capable of being perceived by males from miles away.
  • After mating, the female of the flambeau butterfly (Dryas Julia) lays its eggs in the passion fruit tree. If there is an excess of larvae in the same place, when they hatch, they end up eating each other to have more space. To avoid this, the female normally lays eggs in various places on the leaves.
  • The number of eggs in the laying are around 500, although few are those that reach the adult stage.
  • Can come to live between 9 and 12 months, maximum.

Curiosities about some species of butterflies

As we have already mentioned, there is a huge variety of species of these insects. In this section we will talk about some fun facts about butterflies from different regions of the world:


  • A species that draws a lot of attention is the transparent butterfly (Greta oto). Found in Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia and in certain regions of Brazil, it seeks toxic plants to feed because they are immune to the toxin from these plants.
  • Monarch butterflies travel a distance of 3,200 kilometers during the winter, traveling from the Great Lakes, in Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico, only returning north in the spring.
  • The world's largest butterfly ever found was known as Queen Alexandra Birdwings. Discovered in 1906, males reach 19 cm while females can reach 31 cm from one end of the wing to the other.

Endangered butterflies

  • According to an estimate by Embrapa, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Colombia are the countries with the most species of butterflies in the world. Only in Brazil would be around 3,500 species.
  • In the Brazilian list of endangered animals by the Instituto Chico Mendes, butterflies, unfortunately, are the most recurrent group of insects, there are about 50 at risk of extinction. One of the main reasons for this is the loss of its natural habitat.

What is the butterfly effect?

Created by the American meteorologist, mathematician and philosopher Edward Norton Lorenz, in the 1960s, the term butterfly Effect is used to define minimal changes capable of causing large differences or phenomena of large magnitude.

The expression deludes the theoretical possibility of a butterfly flap wings at some point and such a movement influences a system on the other side of the planet. The term butterfly effect was also popular after the film of the same name with actor Ashton Kutcher, released in 2004.

More fun facts about butterflies

We're not done yet, keep reading these others trivia about butterflies:

  • Did you know that butterflies can communicate with ants?
  • In China and some tropical countries, butterflies are considered an exotic dish.
  • They are very romantic and attract their partner through "love dust", a substance that they themselves release.
  • Eastern cultures see the butterfly as an embodiment of the soul, as did the ancient Greeks. And even today, in different countries around the world, it is believed that when a butterfly lands on us, it is a sign of contact with some spirit or good omens.

Now that you've seen a series of fun facts about butterflies, don't miss this other article about Brazilian butterflies: names, characteristics and photos.

If you want to read more articles similar to Curiosities about butterflies, we recommend that you enter our Curiosities section of the animal world.