Butterfly

📖 In short

The butterfly is one of the most beautiful insects in the world, with delicate wings in bright colors and wonderful patterns. It flies from flower to flower drinking sweet nectar, and its beauty has inspired painters and poets since ancient times.

🤩 Did you know?

A butterfly can't fly if its body is cold, so it sits in the sun to warm up.
Most butterflies live only a week or two, and some about 18 months.
The monarch butterfly migrates thousands of kilometers every year.
Most butterflies have a little knob at the tip of their antennae, while moth antennae look like feathers or threads.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Wings made of scales

If you touch a butterfly's wing, colored dust stays on your finger. This dust is made of tiny scales covering the wing like roof tiles, and they give it its beautiful colors.

🔍 A rolled-up tongue

A butterfly has a long thin tongue curled under its head like a snail shell, which it uncurls to sip nectar from inside a flower, then curls up again.

💡 Tasting with its feet

A butterfly can taste food with its feet! When it lands on a leaf, its feet tell it whether the leaf is right for laying its eggs.

🎯 From caterpillar to butterfly

A butterfly's life starts as an egg, then a caterpillar that eats leaves, then a still chrysalis inside a case, from which an adult butterfly with colorful wings emerges.