Thursday, April 7, 2011

Facts About Butterflies - strangefacts

  • Having a wingspan of only ½", the smallest butterfly is in the world is found in South Africa. It is know as the Dwarf Blue Butterfly
  • Did you know that butterflies need the warmth of the sun to enable them to fly? Butterflies are cold-blooded and will not fly if the temperature is below 50 degrees
  • Fiction, you will not hurt a butterfly if you touch it, although you might rub off some of the color of its wings which are actually miniature scales
  • Butterfly wings are actually clear. Their colors and patterns are made by the reflection of the scales that cover them
  • In Pacific Grove, California, it is a misdemeanor to kill a butterfly
  • Caterpillars do NOT have bones, they have over 1,000 muscles in which they use to move from place to place and they can move at a very quick pace
  • If you find a caterpillar and place him in a designated place, before you know it , he will have crawled out of sight
  • Nicole Kidman has a morbid fear of butterflies
  • Butterflies taste with their feet
  • Butterflies can see color in the ultraviolet range, revealing patterns on flowers to them that humans can’t see
  • Butterflies have taste sensors on their feet, allowing them to stand on a leaf and see if their baby caterpillars can eat it
  • There are about 165,000 known species of butterflies
  • The fastest butterflies can fly up to 37 miles per hour, but most can only fly 5 to 12 miles per hour
  • There are some species of butterflies like the Red Admiral that actually prefer feeding on rotting fruit and animal dung
  • Some butterflies can fly as much as 10,000 feet and others can migrate up to 3,000 miles
  • Milkweed, the host plant for the monarch butterfly also known as "Pleurisy Root" is also used for medicinal purposes
  • Butterflies "taste" with their feet! Butterfly feet are actually tiny receptors which allow them to "taste" the food that they are standing on
  • Chances are it is an adult cabbage white butterfly depositing eggs on your cabbage or vegetables in the cabbage family
  • The caterpillar of the cabbage white is velvety and just the right shade of green to blend in perfectly with the cabbage leaves
  • Fiction, once a bird has eaten a monarch it is definately a reminder NOT to eat another one, for the milkweed that the monarch eats as a caterpillar has a toxic effect when the butterfly is ingested