Butterflies Diet: What do Butterflies Eat?

The butterfly is a flying flower, The flower a tethered butterfly.
~ Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun

Even as kids those delicate, colorful nature’s creatures – Butterflies – have fascinated us. Butterflies belong to the Lepidoptera (meaning scaly (lepido) winged (ptera)) class of insects that as adults have four broad wings covered by brightly colored, tiny scales. Co-members of this second largest class of insects are Moths and Skippers. Butterflies go through a four-stage life cycle to reach this adult stage of their life.

The average life span of an adult butterfly is 2 to 4 weeks. But some butterflies like Monarchs, Mourning Cloaks and tropical heliconians, can live up to nine months. Butterflies enjoy sunny days above 60^oF (butterflies are cold blooded and need to bask in the sun’s warmth to elevate their body temperature).

A regular butterfly day begins with looking for flowers to drink nectar from. They flit over the landscape looking for pink, red, yellow, orange or blue colored flowers with lots of nectar. At night or during wet season, they take shelter underneath leaves, or among grass blades, or in a cranny of a rock or concrete structure.

Most butterflies are colorful insects and almost all are active during the day. Gathering life-sustaining nutrients is their chief activity. Some butterflies are active pollinators. Mud puddling behavior is peculiar to the male butterflies. The adult male butterfly passes nutrients to the adult female, as a nuptial gift, during mating. These nutrients are not only life sustaining but also enhance the survival rate of their eggs.

Butterflies’ diet
Adult butterflies drink liquids to maintain their water balance and energy supplies. This nutrition contributes to their ability to survive, mate and lay eggs. Butterflies are different in their strategies to gather fluid nutrients. The male adult butterflies use mud puddling to collect sodium and amino acids. Many of them are fond of sipping fluids at wet sand or along the edge of streams or at boundaries of dirt trails. They may also gather in shallow waters or wet areas in order to digest the dissolved minerals. Occasionally, when adult butterflies overfeed themselves they squirt out liquid spray from their belly.

Mud puddling: Mud puddling is restricted mostly to male butterflies. During mud puddling they congregate for their community supper. The male butterfly has a much longer anterior hindgut (the small intestines) than its non-puddling female counterpart. During puddling, fluid is pumped through the digestive tract and released from their anus. It is estimated that fluid of up to 600 times their body mass may pass through.

What do butterflies eat?
Yes, butterflies relish their food. The butterfly's antenna (a long shaft with a "club", like a golf club) is sensitive to touch & taste. Adult mouthparts include a proboscis (butterfly’s tongue) tailored for sucking fluid nutrients like nectar, a sugar-rich liquid found in flowers of plants.

Most adult butterflies sip flower nectar, but others may feast on fluids from sap flowers on trees, rotting fruits, bird droppings, or animal dung. Decaying fruits make available to butterflies sugars, useful as carbohydrate. In the rain forest of Borneo, the Saturn butterflies (brush-footed butterflies) feast on rotting fruits. The Admiral butterfly is known to relish bird excreta. With their thin, short proboscis (tongue) the Harvester butterfly actually pierces the body of woolly aphid (bug) and drinks its fluids.

The adult Longwing butterflies such as the Zebra butterflies use their proboscis to get amino acids (proteins) from pollen of flowers. The Blue Lesser Purple Emperor butterflies extract their food from any pungent substance like, carrion flowers or decomposed meat. These butterflies can spot decaying meat from over hundred meters away.

Plants that butterflies like to eat
Adult butterflies do not eat plants but live on fluid nutrients gathered from flowering plants. Different species of butterflies favor different flowers. The flowers they feed on can grow on plants, shrubs, vines or trees. It is the caterpillar (larval stage of butterfly life cycle) that eats various parts of plants where its larvae will hatch. Nowadays, keeping a butterfly garden is quite a hobby wherein one can grow nectar-rich flower plants, provide host plants in the garden for the adult butterfly to lay its eggs and nurture its consequent life cycle. At the end of it, that’s a garden full of vibrantly colored butterflies you will have!