Reddish Vale Country Park

MOTHS

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Although butterflies and moths are very similar, they have many differences. Most butterflies fly during the day, and most moths fly during the night. The best way to identify a butterfly from a moth is to look at its antenna. A butterfly's antenna have knobs at the ends of their feelers, and the ends of the moth's antenna is either feather like or plain. Most butterflies rest with their wings held up above their bodies and most moths rest with their wings spread out flat. Typically butterflies have brightly colored wings and moths have dull colored wings. Most butterflies have slender, hairless bodies, while most moths have a fat abdomen and furry bodies. Butterflies form a chrysalis during the pupa stage of their lives. In moths, the chrysalis is normally contained inside a cocoon. Most moths have tiny hook or bristle hooking the forewings and hind wings together. Butterflies do not have this hook. Moths have existed about 100 million years longer than butterflies. So although butterflies and moths appear very much alike, there are quite a number of differences.

Butterflies And Moths

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect.

It is a popular belief that butterflies have very short life spans. However, butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters.

The butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult.

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth (about ten times the number of species of butterfly) worldwide, with thousands of species yet to be described. Most species of moth are night flyers, but there are day flying species.