Mikaela: Moths and butterflies are those most enjoyed for their beauty and a wild variety of colors and patterns. Hi, I’m Mikaela Coman with watchmojo.com and today we’re gonna take a closer look at these beautiful insects. So the question on everybody’s mind, what’s the difference between a butterfly and a moth?
Marika: Moths are much more primitive than butterfly is, they come from a long, long way. They’ve been on the planet for about 180 million years. So about a hundred million years ago, butterflies emerge from moths and became active during the day, while moths are active at night.
Mikaela: We all know that caterpillars turn into butterflies, but what are the stages of life after that?
Marika: Every butterfly or moth undergoes the same metamorphosis which has four steps, butterfly female and male will mate together and lay on a certain plant an egg, the egg is the first step. Second step is the caterpillar that will get out of the egg and will eat the plant around them; they accumulate energy until it has enough to turn into the third stage, which is the chrysalis stage. A huge transformation will be done and the butterflies will emerge from the chrysalis and try to find a partner, so the cycle goes round again.
Mikaela: I heard the word chrysalis, what exactly is that?
Marika: The chrysalis is really a transformation stage; it’s like when a caterpillar is bore in its cell, the potential to be either a caterpillar or a butterfly. There will be triggering within hormone at the center of the chrysalis we will not see the caterpillar anymore, but it will be the genes of the butterfly that will be express actually.
Mikaela: Is the chrysalis the cocoon?
Marika: Cocoons are protection that is weaved by caterpillars, but only moths caterpillars. So when you see a cocoon, for sure, it’s gonna be a moth. But you can't say something like the Monarch got out of its cocoon, because it doesn’t make a cocoon, it only has a chrysalis.
Mikaela: What’s the normal life span of a butterfly?
Marika: Some of them will live less, about 4 to 10 days, because there’s certain families of moths that they don’t have mouths, so they can't eat, so they will have very short lifespan, just time to reproduce and then afterwards they die. At the other end of the scale, we have a small, small tropical butterflies, we call long wings that will actually eat pollen, dissolving pollen with their saliva, they will be able to take up proteins and expand their lifespan up until 11 months. So it’s from 4 days to 11 months, but generally around a month.
Mikaela: Is it true that we’re not supposed to touch a butterfly? How does that affect them?
Marika: Butterflies are extremely fragile creatures, they have on their wings little, little powder for us, it looks like a powder, but if we look under a microscope, it’s actually rows of scales like fish. These scales are easily detached from the wings, so with our fingers, just by touching the butterfly we will kind of remove the scales from their wings.
Mikaela: Is there any way that we can attract butterflies into our backyard?
Marika: Butterflies needs specific plants, so there’s two different types of plants that they will use, host plants and nectar plants. So if you plant flowers that are really bright, like yellow or purple and smell a lot, they will attract butterflies, you will be able to have them in your garden. If you know a couple of plants on which butterflies lay their eggs, you could be able to see also the metamorphosis which is really, really interesting.
Mikaela: I see that you have here butterflies from north, central and south America. Can you tell us about them?
Marika: We have over 50 species that come from about 20 different countries, but they all come from butterfly farms. Places where they breed butterflies and they bring them to the chrysalis stage, because the chrysalis is immobile it cannot move, it’s easy to actually send it by mail to here. All the butterfly farms we choose are sustainable and will practice fair trade.
Mikaela: Now since we’re here at the botanical garden, can you tell us what differentiates this exhibit from any other?
Marika: Our event is really exceptional because we focus on the education. We actually train specific guides to be in the greenhouse that will do activities and talk about butterflies and moths answer everybody’s question. For sure, you can learn at least something when you come here.
Mikaela: Well thank you for all these information, it was a pleasure talking to you.
Marika: You’re welcome.
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