Butterflies range in size from a tiny 1/8 inch to a huge almost 12 inches.
Butterflies can see red, green, and yellow.
Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees F.
Antarctica is the only continent on which no butterflies or moths have been found.
There are about 27,000 species of butterflies and 150,000 species of moths in the world.
Most butterflies fly in the range of 8 to 20 km per hour. The fastest butterflies are skippers and certain brush-footed butterflies which can fly upwards of 50 km per hour. Most butterflies probably fly in the range of 8 to 20 km per hour.
Butterflies will often use the wind to increase their air speed. The Monarch is known to use fast winds, even the jet stream, to aid migration.
The Brimstone butterfly (Gonepterix rhamni) has the longest lifetime of the adult butterflies: 9-10 months.
Some moths never eat anything as adults because they don't have mouths. They must live on the energy they stored as caterpillars.
Many butterflies can taste with their feet to find out whether the leaf they sit on is good to lay eggs on to be their caterpillars' food or not.
Rubbing the sales off the wings of butterflies will not kill them. As a butterfly or moth ages, their wings naturally deteriorate from brushing past leaves, flowers, and branches. Wing deterioration is an easy way to tell if the butterfly or moth has just emerged, or has been around for a while.
During the time from hatching to pupation, a caterpillar increases its body size more than 30,000 times.
Many caterpillars are covered with stinging hairs which carry a toxin that can be quite painful to humans if touched.
Monarch butterflies regularly migrate between southern Canada and central Mexico, a total distance in excess of 2500 miles. They only weigh 1/50 of an ounce yet travel at 20 mph and reach altitudes of 10,000 feet.
"Puddle clubs" are groups of butterflies (usually males) that gather around mud puddles and other moist areas of soil to suck up salts and other minerals dissolved in water.
Come out to the Naturium to learn more about these fascinating creatures.
