General Information

The butterfly is an insect, which belongs to the group of the Lepidoptera family. It has three body parts-- the head, the thorax and the abdomen.

Its wings are covered by colorful scales. It lays its eggs on plants and some plants obviously object to those plants fake eggs on their leaves so the butterfly would think that another butterfly has already laid its eggs there.

The female butterfly attracts males by smell that could be smelled a very long distance away..

The female butterfly attracts males by smell that could be smelled a very long distance away.

A caterpillar of a butterfly eats so many leaves that for a man to match its diet he would have to eat 20 kilograms of salad per day. A few caterpillars pretend to be droppings as protection from birds.

A few butterflies aren't that pleasant. Some are poisonous and spread disease through the eye. This infects cows very easily. If a butterfly is orange or yellow it is poisonous. Some butterflies hibernate in the winter but not many.

Butterfly Habitats

Tropical rainforests have the most kinds of butterflies. Butterflies also live on cold mountain tops and extremley hot desert. Some fly very long distances just to be in warm climates.

Life Cycle of the Butterfly

A butterfly has four stages in it's life cycle. These are the simple names: 1. Egg 2.Caterpillar 3.Pupa 4. Butterfly

These are the explanations of the stages: An already grown butterfly has to lay a few eggs onto a leaf The butterfly also makes sure that there aren't a lot of other eggs on the leaf because when the egg has hatched, the young caterpillar will need to eat and the other young caterpillars might eat it all.

The basic job of the caterpillar is to eat and grow bigger and that is still a very important stage for it.

Since the caterpillar's skin does not grow,it sheds the skin and grows a larger one. It repeats this process several times. When the caterpillar grows full size it forms a protective shell. In a matter of time the caterpillar turns into a butterfly in the shell which is called a pupa.

Finally, a butterfly comes out of the pupa--the same species as the one which laid the egg.

The Caterpillar

The caterpillar is green but it is not always green it can be brown black and lots of other colors. They eat leaves for food and some that are called pests also eat vegetables. When the caterpillar is too big for its skin it turns in to a cocoon for a long time. In the cocoon it turns itself into a butterfly in a matter of time. Caterpillars have 14 legs, seven times as many as humans.

Here is a drawing
of a butterfly egg.