1. Butterflies taste with their feet and some even hear with their wings!

2. Butterflies have 4 wings and 6 legs, and their skeletons are on the outside.

3. Butterflies are the only animal with scaly wings.

4. There are at least 17,000 different species of butterflies worldwide.

5. The fastest butterfly ever recorded is the Skipper Butterfly, which can reach 37 miles per hour!

6. The world’s largest butterfly is the female Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing, with a wingspan of over 25cm! The world’s smallest butterfly is the Western Blue Pigmy, with a wingspan of just 2cm!

7. Butterflies change their bodies 4 times in their life! Through a process called metamorphosis, they start as an egg, transform into a caterpillar, then form a chrysalis before becoming a butterfly. Bonus fact: in 2009, NASA sent some caterpillars to space to see if they would still metamorphosize, with a little difficulty, they did it!

8. Butterflies have compound eyes, which means that they have thousands of tiny lenses per eye. This means that they can see more colours than humans do, and their eyes have inspired technology, including special cameras used in medical treatment.

9. Butterflies technically don’t eat anything – they drink nectar through their proboscis (which looks like a

curly straw). Their bodies are so clever at using almost all the liquid they take in, so they usually don’t wee or poop(!) and any extra liquid is squirted out of top of their wings!

10. A group of butterflies is often called a kaleidoscope. A group of caterpillars is called an army!