Fun Facts about Painted Lady Butterflies

Impress your students! Share one fun fact a day as you progress through the unit.

The Painted Lady Butterfly or Vanessa cardui is one of the most common butterfly species in the world. They are found on every continent except Antarctica and South America. They thrive throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Nymphalidae
Genus: Vanessa
Species: Vanessa cardui (binomial name)

Caterpillars
• The little balls that appear all over the cup are caterpillar poop. They are called frass.
• A caterpillar grows so fast, its cuticle or skin becomes too tight. So it sheds the cuticle. This is called molting. Molting of the cuticle usually happens about 4-5 times. You may see small black balls in the cup.
• Caterpillar webbing is sticky and dense. It helps caterpillars hang onto leaves.
• A caterpillar may have as many as 4,000 muscles in its body. The caterpillar’s head has 248 individual muscles, and about 70 muscles control each body segment.
• A caterpillar will increase its body mass a 1,000 times or more before pupating.
• A caterpillar’s first meal is usually its protein rich eggshell.

Chrysalises
• Some butterflies overwinter inside the chrysalis and then emerge in the spring.
• The hard shell of the chrysalis is an exoskeleton.
• The exoskeleton is made of chitin, a hard substance similar to fingernails.

Butterflies
• Meconium is a reddish, waste liquid that drips after a butterfly emerges. It is not blood.
• After emerging, its wings are soft and wrinkled. A butterfly straightens its wings by pumping hemolymph (a fluid similar to blood) into its veins.
• A butterfly must assemble the 2 parts of its proboscis as soon as it emerges.
• A butterfly uses its forewings to lift it into flight and its hindwings for speed and quick turning to evade predators.
• Butterflies often have brightly colored wings with unique patterns made up of tiny scales.
• Butterfly wings are actually transparent. The colors and patterns we see are made by the reflection of the tiny scales covering them.
• Males drink from mud puddles to extract minerals that aren’t available in flowers. This behavior is known as puddling.
• Female butterflies lay many eggs to insure that even a few of these eggs will survive.
• There are about 24,000 species of butterflies. The moths are even more numerous: about 140,000 species of them were counted all over the world.