Lots of butterflies are fluttering about once again! The yellow butterflies you notice live here all year round, but all of the rain has been providing some nice, green leaves that hungry caterpillars can feast on! That translates to a burst in the number of butterflies.
Let’s learn some fun facts about these pretty little insects.
Butterflies love to drink nectar from flowers. That’s why you’ll see them around flowering plants.
Useful for finding these flowers is the ability to see colour. Not all animals can do that, by the way! Butterflies can see red, green and yellow, and can even see colours that we humans cannot!
Butterflies taste food with the tips of their feet! They’ll taste-test before drinking a flower’s nectar. Then they drink the nectar through something that looks like a little straw, which is called the proboscis. When they aren’t using the proboscis, they roll it back up.
They need nutrients that nectar doesn’t provide. They get these nutrients, including salts, from moist soil. So when you see butterflies gathered in mud, now you know what they are doing – it’s called “mud-puddling”.
There are 35 known species of butterflies on the island, and over 17,000 different types of butterflies in the world!
Butterflies can be found in all sorts of habitats, from rainforests to deserts. They live on every continent except for Antarctica.
The yellow one that we’re seeing a lot of lately is called a Great Southern White. We also have lots of another butterfly called the Gulf Fritillary, but they are picky eaters, and are less common than the yellow ones. The Gulf Fritillary is orange with black markings.
There are other yellow butterflies found on the island that look similar to the Great Southern White. They belong to the same group, called “Sulphurs and Whites”, but there are small differences in colour, shape and markings.
It’s important not to touch the butterflies, but you can get a good look at them if you go outside. Try staying very still and in the same spot for a while, because they’ll quickly fly away when you approach.
Butterflies and moths belong to the same family, called Lepidoptera. In general, moths are active at night and tend to be dark in colour, while butterflies are active in the day and tend to be colourful, some with very elaborate patterns.
If you see a butterfly fold its wings behind its back, that means it is resting.
Butterflies undergo complete “metamorphosis”. This word comes from the Greek language and means “to transform or change shape”. The insects start of as caterpillars, after they emerge from eggs, which are laid under leaves. Once grown, the caterpillars hang from a branch or stem, form a protective layer around them called a chrysalis, and then emerge from the chrysalis as a butterfly!
The butterfly has to wait a few hours after it emerges from the chrysalis before flying for the first time. That’s because the wings need to dry and spread out.
Great Southern White picture credit: Kelly, via butterfliesandmoths.org.
