Butterflies are some of the most beautiful insects in the world. Butterflies look like flowers flying in the sky . They hatch out of there egg as a caterpiller. Butterflies are brightly colored insects. These butterflies live all over the world except in really cold places. There are more than 7000 kinds of butterflies in North America. The smallest butterfly is an 1/8 of an inch long and the biggest butterfly is over 11 inches long. If you touch a butterflies wings the powder that comes off on your fingers is the scales from its wings.

Butterflies are the second largest insect order. Most butterflies have compound eyes.

They have a mouth that has a long sucking tube. They use this tube to carry pollen from plant to plant. There wings are brightly colored. Butterflies have an intennae that looks like a piece of thread with a club on the end of it.Most buttferflies fly in the daytime.

Butterflies go through four stages in their lives. The first stage is an egg. The second stage is a larvae. The third stage is a pupa. The fourth stage is an adult. After the butterflies mate, the female lays her eggs on a plant. This helps the larvae have food when they hatch. When butterflies grow up they eat pollen, rotting fruit and other plant and animal waste too.

Swallowtail butterflies have long pointed wings that look like the tailfeathers of a brid called a swallow. Swallowtails are large and colorful butterflies. There are over 500 different kinds of swallowtail butterflies in the world. The swallowtail butterfly protects itself by making a stinky odor.

Sulfur butterflies live in Mexico and in the Caribbean. In the fall sulful butterflies fly up to the United States for the winter. There are over 300 kinds of sulfur butterflies. Sulfur butterflies are yellow like sunflowers. Most sulful butterflies have the same shape but have different colors and sizes.

Monarch butterflies are found all over the world. When monarch butterflies are babies they eat this special plant that is poisonous called a milkweed plant. And it will make other animals sick, but not the monarch butterfly. Animals have learned to leave the monarch butterflies alone.

Viceroy butterflies look like the monarch butterflies. So other animals won't eat the viceroy butterfly.

Common blue butterflies are blue just like the blue clouds. They live in North America and they eat ants. The caterpillar produce a juice called honeydew. Ants eat the honeydew juice that the butterflies make. The baby butterfly lives with the ants until they are grown up.

Bibliography:

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS, PUBLISHED BY BLACKBIRCH PRESS, INC., 1997.

MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES, PUBLISHED BY THE CHILDS WORLD INC., 1993.

SIMON-SCHUSTER'S GUIDE TO BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS, PUBLISHED BY SIMON

AND SCHUSTER, 1987.

SIMON-SCHUSTER'S GUIDE TO BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS, PUBLISHED BY SIMON

AND SCHUSTER, 1987.

This is my butterfly diorama.