When you think of butterflies, you’re probably picturing fairy-like creatures with wings like stained glass, delicately sipping from flowers. After all, that’s what they are, right?
Well, yes, but they’re also a lot more to butterflies than you know. This is especially true when it comes to the dark secret they’re all keeping from you — the truth about their eating habits.
“I’m hiding some terrible eating habits, tee hee.”
That’s right. Butterflies have a much more varied diet than just nectar, even though that’s all they’re known for eating (thanks to what we must only assume is a brilliant insect PR stunt). In truth, butterflies, like their less admired insect brethren, really like to get down and dirty with some much less dignified foods. The following items are all things that butterflies also like to consume.
Mud
Butterflies are known for sipping nectar, but flowers can’t sustain them alone; they need nutrients that flowers just can’t give them. For a complete meal, butterflies will land right on the ground and start slurping up mud. It’s believed that the mud contains the amino acids, nitrogen, salt, and proteins they need. This practice is called “puddling.”
Sweat and tears
If a butterfly lands on you, it’s natural to have the delightful feeling that you are, in fact, a Disney prince or princess. In reality, though, the butterfly is likely licking up the sweat from your skin. Like sweat, tears are salty, and butterflies have been observed drinking those, too, from crocodiles and tortoises. This is also a form of puddling, and most puddlers are male; the sodium boosts their sperm and makes them more likely to produce viable offspring.
Blood
Butterflies don’t have the ability to create puncture wounds like mosquitos, so they don’t go around biting people. However, if there’s blood around, they’ll drink it. Blood is full of iron and sugar, both of which are necessary for the butterfly.
Urine
These butterflies were photographed at a mysterious damp spot along a hiking trail, probably where hikers had relieved themselves. Butterflies, it turns out, love pee. It’s probably due to the salts in urine, but butterflies love it so much that they’ll even drink their own pee, which makes them the only animals (besides astronauts) who recycle their own urine.
Poo
That’s right. Beautiful, airy-fairy butterflies love poop. Actually, a lot of animals like poop, namely because it’s full of nutrients, and butterflies are no exception. Similar to mud, feces provide them with minerals, amino acids, and nitrogen.
Rotting flesh
Since butterflies don’t have teeth, they prefer their rotting animal and vegetable remains to be so decayed that they’re liquefied. Again, dead things are full of nutrients, so butterflies leap (er, flutter) at the opportunity. They love dead stuff so much that scientists actually use rotting fish to bait them.
So the next time you’re admiring a butterfly, consider that it might have just feasted on a putrefying animal. If one lands on you, you’re probably less Disney princess and more damp.
This is the reality of nature, though, so while humans usually frown at eating poop, other species are all about it. And even with all this information, butterflies are still delightful.
