What Do Butterflies Eat?

Most butterflies have a straw like tongue with which they suck nectar from flowers. Only a few butterflies never visit flowers instead they get their sustenance from tree sap and some other organic matter like rotting animals.

Almost all Butterfly caterpillars eat plant matter. The caterpillars mainly eat leaves but only a few species feed on seeds and seed pods, while some specialize on flowers.

Most species tend to eat only a small group of linked plant species -- for example Pearl Crescent caterpillars will only eat species of asters. But some species, such as the Gray Hairstreaks, eat a large variety of plants but some will consume only a single plant species. Even though they eat plants, only a few butterfly caterpillars are measured as agricultural pests. Known as the Harvester, the caterpillar of a North American butterfly only eats aphids.

The nectar from a flower.

They eat caterpillars

Nectar from flowering plants, mostly.

Nectar,!rotting animals,

As you know, a butterfly goes through a life cycle. First it is an egg, then it becomes a caterpillar, then a pupa (during which it sleeps through the winter), and finally it emerges as a butterfly.

There is one period during that life cycle when this creature does most of its eating, and that is when it is a caterpillar. In some kinds of butterflies, the only time in its life when it will ever eat anything is during that caterpillar stage. It feeds and grows until it bursts its skin and sheds it for a new one. It may repeat this process many times, and in a few weeks it can be many, many times as large as when it hatched.

But butterflies are equipped to eat. A butterfly has a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. Those butterflies which do eat have a tube instead of the usual insect mouth. This tube, when not in use, is coiled up like a watch spring. It can be thrust deep into the hearts of flowers to suck up their nectar.

In moths, which belong to the same insect order as butterflies, this tube can be 15 to 30 centimetres long, so it can reach into large, tubular flowers. Some moths have saw like teeth at the tip of the" tube with which they can cut through the skins of fruit in order to drink their juices!

Planets

Well, most butterflies suck nectar from a flower. And some lick off the sugar from a wet paper towl.

They eat nectar from flowering plants.

Butterflies eat the flowers on my bushes.

They eat nectar upon a flower and the suck something out of a straw that includes flower,nectar,something called
produce ding

Butterfly feeder is filled with banana goo: Peel a banana, freeze it, then defrost. Once defrosted the banana becomes soft and watery.They love it. Yes it is rotten goo.