Habitats
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Exquisite and delicate butterflies barely need an introduction. At some point, nearly everyone has come into contact with them. However, when examined closely, they can be quite bizarre and extremely fascinating animals.
It’s a wonder how a cylindrical and ungainly caterpillar can develop into an elegant, winged butterfly.
Caterpillars themselves are fascinating insects. Long and tubular, their bodies are normally divided into 13 segments, often with multiple pairs of ‘pseudo-legs’. Although they have only three pairs of real legs, like most insects, the pseudo-legs may give them the appearance of having up to sixteen legs! Caterpillars, unlike butterflies, have strong jaws for chewing leaves and spend most of their time eating. They grow quite quickly and hence need to shed their skin several times before evolving into beautiful butterflies.
Butterflies are extremely delicate creatures, fluttering around on paper-thin wings. Their beautiful patterns are actually made up of thousands of tiny coloured scales which, if the wings are touched, look like dust on one’s fingers.
Delicate as they are, butterflies aren’t made to last and most species pack their whole adult life into just a few weeks. Even though their lives are short, the history of butterflies goes back for approximately 50 million years.
Unlike caterpillars, butterflies have no jaws. The feed on nectar and suck it up from flowers through a long, coiled drinking-straw like structure called a proboscis. In order to find the right flowers they are able to see colours and light spectra that are not visible to the human eye. What’s more, in order to find the right plants to lay their eggs on, so the baby caterpillars can find the right leaves, adult caterpillars have tastebuds on their feet!
Australia is home to approximately 416 species of butterflies. The Butterflies habitat features a variety of butterflies including the Ulysses butterfly, the Australian lurcher butterfly, and the Cairns birdwing, the largest Australian butterfly with a wingspan of over 16 centimetres!
