Butterflies belong to an insect family
called lepidoptera.
A butterfly starts its life as a tiny egg.
When the eggs hatch, a caterpillar emerges.
Caterpillars are eating machines. They
have massive jaws for munching leaves. In
their short lifetime, they may eat as much
as 20 times their weight in food!!
The caterpillar has a very special body.
Parts of the caterpillar’s head.
Sections of a caterpillar
head
thorax
abdomen
A caterpillar soon begins to molt.
1
2
3
Next, it spins its silk ‘button’ and forms
its chrysalis.
Now, the pupa (chrysalis) is ready to
emerge as an adult.
Now, the butterfly has to “blowdry” its
wings in the fresh air.
Finally, the butterfly is ready to fly!
Parts of the butterfly (dorsal view)
Side view of butterfly parts
Let’s look a little closer at the butterfly’s
body parts!
A butterfly has 2 antennae on its head.
They are skinny with little knobs on the
end. Butterflies use their antenna to smell
flowers, plants, and other butterflies.
A butterfly has two compound eyes lots of little eyeballs grouped together.
Each eyeball sees a little part of what
the butterfly is looking at. It's like
looking through a bunch of straws
bundled together.
eye
Picture of magnified eye
A proboscis is like a long tongue or
drinking straw. The butterfly uncoils its
proboscis and sips up flower nectar or
fruit juice.
magnification of proboscis
Butterflies have 6 legs (3 pairs).
Butterflies taste with their feet! That's
how they find flower nectar and the best
plants to lay their eggs.
The butterfly’s wings are a work of art!
The color patterns of butterfly wings are
made up of thousands of tiny overlapping
scales.
Tiny colorful scales cover the both sides of
a butterfly's wings. Scales with different
colors make patterns and designs on the
wings. These patterns are almost the same
on the left and right wings, but patterns
are very different on the front and back
of the wing.
Pictures of scales on wings
Some butterflies have very colorful wings
so other butterflies can see them and find
them when they want to mate. Sometimes
brightly colored butterflies are poisonous
and bad-tasting. When other animals see
them, they know not to eat them.
Some butterflies have dull colors on their
wings. This helps to camouflage or hide
them so other animals won't eat them.
What have you learned about butterflies??