It so happened that insects in our society are mostly negatively treated. Some give birth to spiders or even cockroaches as pets, and in some regions of the planet they eat them, but mostly they cause people to disgust and other negative emotions. The only exception was butterflies, which, although they consider insects, but the attitude in society towards them is the opposite: they are admired, admired and even used as fresh flowers.
Representatives of the order Lepidoptera not only please others with their appearance, they play a crucial role in the life of plants - they pollinate them. People are mainly attracted by butterfly wings for their beauty and bizarre patterns, but among more than 200 thousand species of these insects, not everyone is as harmless and beautiful as is commonly believed.
Among these cute creatures, there are pests (for example, cabbage moth or fruit moth), and even vampires (some types of nocturnal moths). Contrary to the popular belief that butterfly wings should be large and beautiful, some species are generally wingless (for example, some freckles or ognevki). The order of Lepidoptera is very diverse, its representatives are sometimes not similar to each other either externally, or habitat, or food addictions.
Returning to butterflies in the classical sense (those that feed on nectar and have large mottled wings), it should be noted that they, like many other insects, look like this only at the last stage of their development. Lepidoptera life begins with eggs that the female lays in a secluded place. It can be thickets of grass, foliage of trees, the bottom of a pond (and this happens) or a cabinet in the kitchen (some types of moths breed offspring in food).
After some time, larvae appear, which are also called caterpillars. In most cases, they are the pests (except for blood-sucking species). In the process of growth and development, caterpillars are able to destroy products ten times more than their own volume, and if there are thousands and tens of thousands, they are able to eat whole fields, being a kind of natural disaster. As a result, the larva becomes a chrysalis (in some species this stage of development is absent), and only then - a butterfly.
The last stage of development of Lepidoptera does not last long. Some species from the moment when the first flap of the wings of the butterfly occurs and before they die, they can live just a few hours (they are called - one-day ones). Moreover, at the larval stage, they can live for several years. The structure of a one-day butterfly does not provide for the digestive system - they feed only as caterpillars, "matured", leave offspring in the form of eggs and die.
In some countries there are entire parks and gardens where these beautiful insects, fed by people, fly freely among flowers and trees, delighting visitors with their bizarre patterns. Looking at the wings of a butterfly, which, slowly shaking them, sits on a flower, it is difficult to believe that it is the closest relative of the cabbage, which destroys the crop. But this is true.
These creatures are sometimes so beautiful that people are ready to watch for hours, holding their breath, as they fly from flower to flower, but sometimes they are disgusting and bloodthirsty. It so happened that in some, butterfly wings are associated with a beautiful pattern that looks like a flower, while in others they cause only outrage due to loss of crop. This, apparently, is the main mystery of the nature of Lepidoptera.
