With graceful flight and colorful wings, butterflies are among the most acclaimed insects in society for their beauty. However, beyond their outer beauty, these delicate creatures hold very interesting secrets.
Do you want to know more about these wonderful and excellent flying creatures? From Ecologist Verde we present the butterfly characteristics that will surprise you the most, because surely most of you do not know them, such as physical aspects, where they live, what they eat, types and curiosities.
To start talking about butterfly characteristics and various aspects about them, first we will locate them as living beings. These belong to the most abundant animal group, that of insects, and as such, they are arthropods, that is, they have the body divided into three parts: head, thorax and abdomen. Also, within the group of insects, the butterflies are lepidoptera, the fourth most diverse group in number of species, whose main characteristic focuses on having wings with scales. Finally, these beautiful beings are holometabolos, or what is the same, their development is based on four phases: embryo, caterpillar or larva, pupa and adult.
Regarding their physical characteristics, these colorful insects have a pair of long antennae, compound eyes, six legs, sensory hairs, and two large wings. It is in the thorax where the activity of the flight is controlled and from where these characteristic wings are born, which can only take flight if the body temperature of the butterfly exceeds 30 degrees.
The main function of these flight mechanisms is focused on regulating the body temperature of the butterflies, in addition to being allies as signaling and courtship tactics in mating seasons. The striking and iridescent colors of these wings are due to the diffraction and refraction of light that occurs in their scales, full of colors thanks to pigmentation. Unfortunately, when butterflies get old, they lose color.
The common habitat of these animals is based mainly on tropical regions with hot climates all or most of the year and abundant vegetation, their main source of food. It is in the tropics where you can find more number of species.
On the contrary, in temperate regions, the number of species decreases as latitude increases, being few those that endure cold temperatures. However, butterflies are so geographically diversified that Antarctica is the only continent where no species of Lepidoptera can be found.
During their period as caterpillars, these insects devour almost any plant matter thanks to their chewing mouth apparatus, such as stems, leaves or flowers, although they can also take advantage of certain foods collected and treated by humans such as seeds, grains or flour. Once matured, butterflies suck pollen, nectar and fungal spores through their lick-sucking mouthpart, which we could commonly say is the butterflies tongue, technically called spiral spirit or proboscis.
However, according to the feeding type They may have, butterflies can be divided into three groups: polyphagous, oligophagous, and monophagous.
In this other article we discover the Plants and flowers that attract butterflies.
During the time of courtship of butterflies, these are located by flapping and smell and they use their precious wings for seduction. After mating, the females lay hundreds of whitish, yellow or green eggs in sheltered places with abundant vegetation.
At birth, small caterpillars They protect themselves from predators, feed on plants and later transform into pupae or chrysalis, a period in which they do not feed and undergo great changes. Then the butterflies emerge with their colorful shapely wings ready to fly.
Despite the fact that only approximately 130,000 species of butterflies and moths have been described, it is estimated that there are around 200,000 species of these. Unfortunately, it is possible that at the rate we are going, we can never meet the rest of the hitherto unknown species, because these animals, as with many others, are seeing their populations reduced by human impact.
Here are some of the most amazing butterfly species:
To finish, we leave you a list of curiosities of butterflies that you surely did not know:
If you liked this information, we recommend you read this other article by Green Ecologist about Curiosities of invertebrate animals. Also, here below you can see a video about butterflies and their characteristics.
If you want to read more articles similar to Characteristics of butterflies: where they live, what they eat, types and curiosities, we recommend that you enter our Wild Animals category.