Butterfly wings are both beautiful and functional!

Butterflies have thousands of protective scales all over their wings. If you have ever touched a butterfly’s wing you may have felt something that feels like dust on your fingers- those were scales! For this reason, please DO NOT touch butterflies’ wings. The scales are very tiny, but VERY important. The butterfly’s scales help it fly and give it the beautiful colors you see.

There have been recent studies in the butterfly world that reveal that butterfly wings are actually living structures. Scientists used infrared cameras to look at the butterfly wing structure and found that wings release more heat than their surrounding area to help moderate the butterfly’s temperature. This is leading to some interesting discussion on how this can help the engineering community create micro-structures to control light and heat, and help build better airplanes too! Have older children further research butterfly wings and think of ways butterfly wings can better some man-made structures. This can lead into very interesting bio-mimicry projects!