Heroes Not Zombies

While wandering around yesterday I stumbled across this lovely butterfly. It’s not easy to get a photo of a butterfly cos they don’t stay still for very long, but this one seemed to be taking its time more than the others. It got me wondering. What do butterflies eat? And how do they fly the way they do? Their flight seems most erratic, apparently lacking the consistency of movement that you see in bird flight for example. I realised I don’t know very much about butterflies at all! I certainly don’t know anything about butterfly classification! What “kind” of butterfly is this?

Well, when I got back home I checked out wikipedia. Turns out butterflies only eat liquids which they suck up through their long, tube-like “probosci”. They live on nectar and they can drink water from puddles. I would have guessed they lived on nectar but I hadn’t realised they had a fluid only diet. As for how they fly, well, that’s even more interesting…….it turns out nobody understands it. Their mechanism of flight – the aerodynamics and the physics of it – has never been fully explained. About four different ways of flying have been described but they don’t provide a full explanation and nobody knows how they manage to switch between the different flight modes so quickly.
I’m quite happy about that. I do like to learn but I also enjoy having that feeling of wonder and amazement. What I like best is a mixture of understanding and marvel. Butterfly life fits the bill!