Amazing Facts Of The Most Colourful Winged Creatures: Butterflies

Long since I had a sleeping desire of visiting a butterfly park and that came true just a couple of days back.  I could find some time convenient out of my busy schedule to visit the Nandankanan botanical park where a large concentration of a wide variety of butterflies are seen .

Do you have any idea about the unique ability of butterflies to tell time and track the position of the sun. The time-keeping cells are in their antenna, and butterfly eyes can follow the sun’s location with good accuracy. Do you have any idea about the second largest pollinators in the world just next to honey bees? They are none other than butterflies. Do you know that butterflies have four wings not just two……. please go through the following article regarding all these amazing facts about butterflies.

Amazing Facts Of The Most Colourful Winged Creatures: Butterflies

# The word ‘butterfly’ comes from an old  

   English word ‘buterfleoge’.

# Butterflies can’t hear but they can feel 

   vibration .

# Lungless butterflies breathe with the help of

   respiratory blood in their body.

# Butterflies eat only liquid food.

# They smell with a pair of “antennae”.

# Butterflies have compound eyes. So they

   see the fragmented parts of an object and 

   put each fragmented picture together to see the whole object

# There lies a one word substitution for a group of butterflies and that is ‘ flutter’.

# Their eyes do have more than 6,000 lenses and they can see ultraviolet light.

# The lower part of the butterfly’s legs (called

    the tarsi) has many buds. That makes them

    feel sad.

# Millions of overlapping scales give butterfly wings their colour.

# These butterflies can fly even when their

    wings are blown, but it is their wings which 

    make them look colourful.

# Female butterflies are larger and live longer

   than male butterflies.

# When they are young, they have many 

   sharp hairs and the toxins in them are 

   poisonous, so look at them but don’t touch 

   them.

# Butterflies are the second largest group of 

   pollinators next to honey bees.

# They are the largest. Monarch butterflies 

   can fly about 3000 km. They may  cover a 

   few countries during their flights. Some 

   butterflies can fly at night.

# Lack of habitat for butterflies is a major

   threat to butterflies.

# Butterflies are seen all over the world 

   except in Antarctica.

Please go through the following slides having a detailed description about their diet, lifecycle, host plants, flying habits, wings and their role in our lives.

Dr. Manoj Mishra ,lunarsecstasy@gmail.com