Butterflies!! Alot of em!

... Butterflies are insects. All insects have six legs and three body parts. A head, A thorax (the middle) and an abdomen. The butterfly uses its antennae to smell and to eat it has a long tube like thing called a proboscis. Since it doesn't have any teeth or mandibles (the pincher things on insects like ants) it can only eat liquids. Butterflies have four wings. These wings are very fragile and easily broken. The color on the wings comes from overlapping scales which bounce light off their shiny surfaces. If you rub off the scales on a butterfly wing it will become thin and transparent.Butterflies start out as caterpillars. A caterpillar does nothing but eat and eat so it can get bigger. It will shed its skin four times before it gets big. A caterpillar does not make a cocoon to turn into a butterfly - moth larvae do that. A caterpillar only puts out one string of silk onto a tree branch and then hangs upside down. It sheds its skin for the last time and turns into a chrysalis. The chrysalis is soft at first and then hardens into a little shell. The chrysalis gets darker in color just before a butterfly hatches. After the butterfly hatches it will cling to the empty chrysalis for a bit and pump its wings up and down to get blood going through the wings' veins.There are about 100,000 to 200,000 different species of moths and butterflies. But many butterflies are in danger of extinction. Some have already become extinct. Just like animals they too are hunted for their beauty.

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