How many legs does a butterfly have? How many feet does a butterfly have?

You, of course, know what a butterfly looks like, but what does she like to eat, where she lives, how she multiplies, and, finally, how many legs does a butterfly have? All these questions surely confuse many. So, you need to figure it all out.

Meet the butterfly!

Butterflies belong to the detachment of arthropods and, among other things, among invertebrates - these are the most highly developed creatures. Probably, there is no person who could indifferently look at a beautiful petal-like insect, which, moreover, has the amazing ability to undergo a complex metamorphosis, transforming from a crawling insatiable caterpillar larva into an elegant winged creature.

It is interesting that as far back as the 19th century. Caterpillars and butterflies were referred to different types of insects, but lepidopterology (the science of butterflies) helped to place many things in places. By the way, now scientists are sure that almost 100 thousand species of butterflies remain unexplored.

Hives - a messenger of spring

Based on the example of a well-known hives, we will find out what the butterflies are, how many legs they have and how amazing their transformations are.

One of the most unique and at the same time often occurring representatives of the family Nymphalides is the butterfly hives (Aglais urticae). It can be seen throughout North America, Europe, Russia, Asia, China and Japan. And it is named so in honor of the bias of her caterpillar to one type of food - nettle.

Males of urticaria die in the fall, and the fertilized females winter in cracks, sheds, cellars, attics and other secluded places, wrapping their corpuscles with wings like a blanket, and sometimes even freezing through and becoming a fragment of ice.

This is one of the few butterflies that hibernate in the state of adults (an adult). But already in April, with the first rays of the sun, hives come out of hibernation and make our eyes bright with black and orange spots on the background of the first green.

How butterflies feed and reproduce

In the spring, just the best way to consider the structure of butterflies. All about butterflies, or almost everything, You can find out by observing the hives and other early beauties - lemongrass from the family of Belyanok, who have bright lemon wings and got their name for it.

In early spring, they still have little to spare, and butterflies are saved by sweet birch sap. And in the summer they, of course, prefer fruit juice, nectar aster and daisies (urticaria) or hawthorn flowers (lemon grasses).

True, other beauties may have a special delicacy of animal excrement or wet clay, which, as it turned out, are the supplier of trace elements necessary for insects. And scoops living in India and Malaysia - and at all predators. They feed on the blood and tear fluid of large animals.

The hives of the urticaria in May are looking for a suitable place for their eggs. And find it, as you might guess, on the young shoots of nettle, less often - on hops or hemp. Cabbages - prefer cabbage, and some species of butterflies scatter their eggs on the ground.

His yellow-green, similar in shape to the barrels, testicles, the female hives lay uneven heap on the underside of the leaf, 150-200 pieces and perishes, and in ten to twelve days of these already there will be tiny caterpillars.

How caterpillars of hives look

Immediately after the birth of larvae eat an empty egg shell and braid the lower part of the leaf with a common network of cobwebs, under which they hide at night and in bad weather, and if the sun shines, the caterpillars greedily eat.

Larvae live in a heap, do not spread far apart and sometimes eat up their "home" - nettle - so that only veins remain from the leaves.

Crooked with spike-like outgrowths with short hairs, calves of insatiable urticaria caterpillars, as a rule, are brown, almost black with double yellow longitudinal bands. By the way, during their development, they, like the larvae of other butterflies, moult several times, changing the shell and thus increasing in size in a month by almost 2 cm.

And before we find out how many feet the butterfly has, let's count them in the larva. Like most caterpillars, urticaria has five pairs of abdominal legs (they are called false), and three pairs of pectorals are true. Of these, later, when pupating, the butterfly will develop its six legs, but the false legs are more like a device for holding the larva on a leaf. They are usually plump and short, decorated at the end with tiny hooks and hooks that act like hook-and-loop fasteners.

From chrysalis to butterfly

Before pupation, the caterpillars become more isolated and stop their endless process of eating in order to find a place where they can safely catch on. As a rule, this happens right there, on a forage plant, but sometimes caterpillars creep up and 15 m to find a suitable place for themselves. It can be a fence, wall or other vertical surface.

On it the caterpillar hangs upside down, being fixed with the help of its glue, and when the skin comes down from the larva, in its place is a pupa, which has an angular shape and is colored in a brown or golden color, sometimes also with a beautiful pearl luster.

About three weeks later, a butterfly with a very short wings hatches from such a chrysalis. For a while she will sit, growing them (they become bigger just before our eyes!), And then go on her first flight.

What does a butterfly look like?

What is the external structure of the butterfly? It can be divided into three parts: head, chest and abdomen. On the butterfly's head are prominent eyes and a pair of long antennae antennae that extend from the frontal part between the insect's eyes and help him perceive smells, vibrations of the air, and also keep balance in flight.

On the lower part of the head, the butterfly has a mouthpiece, in the form of a spiral of a proboscis formed by connected, but not intergrown, blades of the lower jaw (they are, by the way, easily detachable with a pin).

Through this proboscis, the butterfly, with the help of a pharyngeal pump similar to that of a forge, is drawing in nectar.

Why paw the butterfly hives?

And how many walking legs in a butterfly hives, you can determine how to review it.

The butterfly's breast is divided into three segments, each of which carries its own pair of legs. In total there are six butterflies. But the front pair in some species is a rudimentary process.

As a walking, such butterflies use only four legs. True, it should be noted that in all of them they are more likely to serve only on the surface, rather than for walking, so they are equipped with a large number of special devices. And many butterflies on the legs are also taste buds. And the insect will not start eating until it touches the sweet nectar with its limbs.

What do the hives look like?

The legs of urticaria, like other butterflies, are called runny. They are attributed to such in connection with the characteristics of the structure. They, like other butterfly species, are segmented and divided into five segments, which are called the basin, the trochanter, the thigh, the shin and the foot. The paws are divided into five segments and have a pair of claws at the end.

Almost all butterflies on the front legs have spurs (so-called epiphysis), which the insect uses to purify the antennae. It is true, for example, how many legs a butterfly has in a sack is difficult to answer, since its paws are reduced almost completely.

How are the feet of butterflies

The fact that the butterfly's legs, and what function they perform, directly affects their structure.

• To the belly of the butterfly, the first segment of the foot is practically immovably fixed - the basin, on the inner side of which a number of muscles are fixed, allowing the foot to unbend, bend and give its movement a certain amplitude.
• Between the basin and the thigh is the next segment - the vertlug. This is the smallest part of the foot that provides its mobility. The role of the acetabulum can be compared with that performed by a man's hip joint.
• The longest part of the foot bearing the main load is the thigh. It is the size of the thigh which determines to which kind of legs to attribute this or that limb to an insect. With the acetabulum the hip joins motionless, but with the shin - with the help of a mobile joint. He is called the knee.
• The shin in the butterfly has practically the same length as the thigh, but the volume is smaller.
• The foot is the last segment of the limb of the urticaria. It consists of five parts and has at the end a pair of claws.

How many legs do butterflies have to help hear

A unique feature of Nymphalides, which include hives, is that these butterflies, unlike their relatives, use only two pairs of legs. The third one - the front one - is always pinned to the chest, shortened, lacking claws and covered with brush-like hairs.

But on the shin of each of the remaining legs there are hairs that help to detect and strengthen any vibrations and instantly react to the danger. This is despite the fact that all butterflies do not possess hearing.