Butterfly
Butterflies can't hear, but they can feel vibrations they taste with their feet and don’t have lungs.They breathe through openings on their abdomen called 'spiracles' and smell with their antennae. Millions of shingle like overlapping scales give butterfly wings their colour.Butterflies are still able to fly if their scales are removed, they are just less colourful! They are divided into two main groups called skippers and true butterflies. The females are usually bigger and live longer than the males. The Queen Alexandra's birdwing from the island of New Guinea is the largest butterfly - it can have a wingspan of 27 cm! Butterflies are related to crabs and lobsters, because they have exoskeletons. There are about 24,000 species of butterfly. Australia has 385 species of butterfly, nearly 70% of which are found in the rainforests of the Tropics. The Painted Lady is the most wide spread butterfly species in the world, occurring on all continents except South America and Antarctica. Antarctica is the only continent on which no butterflies, moths & skippers have been found. Look but don't touch - many caterpillars are covered with stinging hairs which carry a toxin that can be quite painful if touched. Some butterflies, such as the Northern Pearly Eye, will fly at night. Butterflies are the second largest group of pollinators, bees are the largest. Monarch butterflies have been known to migrate over 3000km. The largest threat to butterflies is loss of habitat. The fastest butterflies fly at around 12 mph, some moths can fly up to 25 mph, and they cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees. Some moths don’t eat anything as an adult because they have no mouth, so they have to rely on the energy they stored as caterpillars.