We visited a new butterfly exhibit at Parque Metropolitano de Panama.  The photos from this blog I took to show you.  Enjoy my blog about these beauties!

I had some questions I wanted to answer and I’m sharing my research with you!

How many kinds of butterflies are there?

Butterflies eating fermented fruit

There are approximately 20,000 species around the world. In Panama, there 1,600 different species!  How lucky am I to live here?

What do Butterflies eat?

I bet you know that most adult butterfly’s drink nectar through their tongues, which function much like straws, but I bet you didn’t know that a minority of butterflies eat tree sap and rotting animal, Eew!

Butterfly caterpillars almost all eat plants and some eat seeds and others eat flowers! And hey! did you know that the harvester caterpillar eats aphids. Caterpillars will eat a wide variety of plants and some eat only one kind of plant.

Where do they sleep?

They can sleep in cracks in rocks and deep in grass.

How long do they live?

An adult can live up to one month and smaller ones can live only a week or so and some such as monarchs, morning cloaks and tropical heliconians, can live to nine months!!

 

 

Where do butterflies lay their eggs?

They usually lay there eggs on a leaf that the caterpillar will eat when it hatches

Do butterflies have a sense of smell?

Yup, they have ears on the bottom of there feet!!

Do you want to see more butterflies?  Make a butterfly garden! Here’s what we are planting near our 3rd pond on the farm.

What flowers to plant, Okinawa spinach, ’’the shrimp plant’’, sun flower, frangipani, lantana flowers, lemon, cherry, mango, cherimoya

Our butterflies love these plants.  come and see our garden when it’s done!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by:  Shoghi

Photos by: Shoghi