This may sound gross, but due to the fact that butterflies only feed on liquids, it is possible that butterflies drink exposed or puddled blood, particularly because blood is rich in minerals, but blood is not a main source of energy for most butterfly species.
Butterflies can gain energy from a surprisingly large variety of sources, including disgusting and rotten things.
If you would like to know more about the remarkably unrefined diet of a buttery, this article will explore butterfly feeding and diet, as well as details about a member of the butterfly (Lepidoptera) family that does, in fact, feed on blood!
Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Just a Few Foods on a Butterfly’s Menu
We should note that most butterflies will not feed on anything other than nectar from a flower using the feeding tube that will be discussed below.
Butterflies do not limit themselves to nectar and will actually taste anything and everything that provide them with the minerals and nutrients they need, including:
- Dead animals
- Urine
- Tree sap
- Rotting fruit
- Dung
- Dissolved soil
- Wet sand
- Human sweat
- Decaying flesh
- Carcasses
- Animal tears
- Blood
Pretty much anything goes that is moisture rich, or has sugars for energy or minerals or salts for reproduction.
Butterflies have even been known to land on people and feed on their sweat to get the salts they crave!
Read More: Do Butterflies Bite or Sting?
There is also a Lepidopteran species that feeds on human and animal blood!
The Vampire Moth (Calyptra thalictri) is notorious for being the consummate blood sucker, it emerges from Siberia where it was found amidst a pile of bat guano in 2008 and has spread across northern Europe.
This blood sucking moth was such an addict that it did not hesitate to drill its tongue into the offered human hand of the author when it took its research.
The moth is completely adapted to feeding in a manner which includes sanguivory, (blood drinking) with a barbed tongue which allows it to penetrate flesh.
Like a massive mosquito, it likes the charge it gets from blood, and the sustenance exceeds that of its non-vampiric counterparts (fruit, etc.).
Nutritional Source: The blood taken from other sources is utilized as a nuptial gift to a female during reproduction, which could provide sustenance for the next generation of mothed terrors.
It might disgust you, but mud-puddling is how butterflies acquire nutrients.
Mud-puddling, usually labelled puddling, is a distinct behaviour of butterflies which involves seeking moist material to suck up rich nutrient laden liquid.
In some wet locations and sometimes after heavy rains, or trees bear fruit and drop (like fungus) that yield a nutritious and liquid laden mouthing of moist material and nutrients.
Dried dung or dead carcasses can also be the site of moet milk puddling also.
Male butterflies often mimic the behavior of adults by feeding on the nutrient source, and may transfer beneficial nutrients to females.
After all the ruckus and munching cause by larvae, adult butterflies do not eat!
Almost adult butterflies possess a certain set of anatomically mouthpart (long tubular) called a proboscis, and they suck liquid like a straw.
Because their curled tongue is tubular in form and limited to straight sucking gestures, they only manage to consume liquids intermittently (sipping on water droplets, otherwise sweet nectar and sustenance in certain flowers).
Anatomy of Butterfly Mouth and Digestive System
The head of a butterfly is uniquely developed to accommodate its liquid diet. There are two anatomical structures involved in butterfly feeding.
The Labial Palpi
The labial palpi are sensory pokes on the front of the butterfly’s head that bear olfactory (smell) sensors and help butterflies sense moisture conditions in their environment, and to find food sources. They may also have an evolved function of providing some cover to the butterfly tongue, called the proboscis.
The labial palpi may also function as a protective filter for the butterflies eyes because they are feeding on some of their more unpalatable food sources further down the web pages.
Defensive: some of the websites where butterflies food sources are infested with mites, so a well developed pair of palpi are potentially providing some added protection!
The proboscis
The proboscis is a mouth structure which is essentially two grooved channels that are joined together into a cylindrical form that can be considered a drinking straw.
The butterfly utilizes its proboscis, muscular and neurogenic, to feed. The proboscis can be rolled up and “stored”, then extended when the butterfly is ready to feed. If a butterfly feeds on sticky substance that clogs their proboscis, the proboscis can separate and be cleaned out.
The proximity of the labial palpi, to the proboscis, and their taste sensors, as well as the taste sensors located on their legs are all patterned to enhance the butterflies “tasting” experience.
A Highly Adapted Digestive System that will efficiently digest and process ingested liquids.
The digestive tract in a butterfly has a foregut, a midgut and a hindgut.
The foregut is developed to give sucking pressure to provide sucking of fluid via the proboscis.
These liquids then travel down the butterflies pharynx (throat), and oesophagus to a crop.
The foregut at this point is just a straight section midgut that has digestive enzymes along its surface into a longer hindgut where the absorption of nutrients from ingested materials occurs.
Do Butterflies Eat Leaves?
Adult butterflies do not eat leaves; however, their larvae (caterpillars) will eat leaves in order to create a deposit of potassium ions that will acidify the digestive tract of the adult butterfly.
Butterflies and Decomposition
Butterflies play an enormous role in the acts of decomposing biomass. They will return repeatedly to exposed cadavers and visit them in all the stages of decomposition.
They are popularly known as necrophages, with their population reducing all mass of carrion as they graze in smaller and smaller liquified chunks.
Rounding up
Who would have thought the diet of a butterfly is so grisly?
If this article has changed the way you perceive beautiful delicate butterflies forever, you are probably not the only one.
However, butterflies are important contributors to biodiversity, and healthy landscapes and ecosystems, meaning although their caterpillar stage can be a pest, butterflies are the essential pollinators every productive garden needs!
So, the next time you see a butterfly flutter by, appreciate it, but don’t get too close – after all you don’t really know where it has been!