Category Biology

What are the differences between butterflies and dragonflies?

Even though both butterflies and dragonflies are insects, both of them belong to different orders. Butterflies belong to the order Lepidoptera and dragonflies belong to the order Odonata.

      Butterflies and dragonflies differ in their life cycles. They also differ in their choices of habitat, diet, and morphology. Butterflies can be found in various environments ranging from rainforests to mountains.

      Dragonflies like to be around moist areas such as wetlands, ponds, streams, and lakes. Butterflies will uncoil their proboscis or feeding tube and drink nectar from flowers, whereas dragonflies much prefer flying insects like bees.

          Dragonflies have two pairs of wings that are transparent, straight, and have few veins. But the wings of butterflies are scaly

What makes butterflies different from other insects?

Butterflies are insects that belong to an order named Lepidoptera, which includes moths too.

      Even though butterflies belong to the ‘insect’ category, they are significantly different from other insects. All insects have three main divisions to their bodies: head, thorax, and abdomen. Insects have their skeleton around the bodies, not inside them, like the mammals.

      Structurally, butterflies are like all other insects, but their most important difference is the scale covering on wings and body. Unlike other insects, they also have the ability to coil up their feeding tube, or proboscis. All insects have six legs attached to the thorax, although some butterflies have shortened front legs.

     The world’s most abundant creatures are the insects, whose known species outnumber all other animals and the plants combined.

Why are butterflies known as flying flowers?

Butterflies are known as flying flowers because of their colorful bodies and wings.

     They come under the category of ‘insect’. A butterfly has six legs, four wings, and two antennae.

      The thin, delicate lines that make them colorful are called scales. Most butterflies are harmless. You can find butterflies every-where in the world, except Antarctica. Butterflies are also an important part of nature because they make the flowers bloom by cross pollination. Cross pollination means, pollinating a flower or plant with pollen from another flower or plant.

How do certain beverages give a feeling of freshness?

Most of the beverages contain alkaloids which act as mild stimulants. Caffeine, for example, is found in coffee, tea, cocoa, milk chocolate and also in cola drinks. Tea has a trace of theophylline. Cocaine is found in products. These alkaloids are collectively referred to as methyl xanthenes. They share a number of pharmacological actions of much therapeutic interest: they relax, smoothen the muscles (notably bronchial muscle), and stimulate the central nervous system and cardiac muscle. They induce the kidneys to excrete more urine, stimulate mental activity, and quicken the reflexes, increase vigilance and decrease motor reactions time in response to both visual and auditory stimuli. They increase stamina and reduce fatigue. They give the users a feeling of confidence and power. They even induce euphoria in some users. These stimulant effects are short lived: they last for about an hour. They are then subsequently followed by depression. Overdose or repeated use may lead to paranoia, psychosis.

What imparts fragrance to flowers, fruits and species?

            Fragrance in flowers, fruits and spices is due to a wide variety of essential oils (volatile liquids) present in them. They are mostly insoluble in water but freely soluble in alcohol, ether and vegetable mineral oils. They are not oily to touch.

            The oils may be grouped into five classes, according to their chemical structure alcohols, esters, aldehydes, ketones, lactones and oxides.

            The fragrance may be in leaves (as in sage, thyme and mint), in bark (as in cinnamon and cassia), in wood (as in cedar and sandalwood), in flower petals (as in rose and violet), in seeds (as in anise and caraway), in roots, in fruit rind (as in orange) or in resinous gums secreted from the tree (as in camphor and myrrh).

            The oils are formed generally in the green parts of the plant, and with plant maturity, transported to other tissues particularly to flowering shoots. The exact function of an essential oil in a plant is unknown – it may be to attract insects for pollination, or to repel harmful insects, or it may simply be a metabolic intermediate.

            Dr. Palaniappan of Pudukkottai, TN, writes: aroma associated with cinnamon, vanilla and cuminum are due to carbonyl group of aldehydes and ketone. Aromatic aldehydes such as cinnamaldehyde and vanillin are found in cinnamon and vanilla respectively. Cumaldehyde (p-isopropyl benzaldehyde) is found in the volatile oil of cuminum. Aliphatic esters namely methyl n-butyrate and ethyl n-butyrate are found in apples and pineapples. Benzyl acetate, an aromatic ester imparts fragrance to jasmine. Spices and condiments contain monoterpenoids with two isoprene units and sesquiterpenoids with three isoprene units. Eugenol in clove, linalool in coriander, zingiberene in zingiber, menthol in mint, cineol in cardamom and anethole in feoniculum are a few examples. Sandalwood contains a terpenoid called santol in the wood cells.

Fruits were supposed to attract animals. So what is the point of lemons tasting, so sour? Are there any animals which actually like the taste? Did we breed lemons from ones that were sweeter? Or do an

            Plants use many methods to distribute their seeds and succulent fruits such as lemons are not necessarily designed to be eaten. Many, such as blackberries and plums, are bitter until the seeds are ‘ready, while others, apples and many tropical fruits are designed to encourage pecking by birds, which scatters the seeds. Another group including figs and senna pods encourage animals to eat the fruits without digesting the seeds, allowing the seeds to pass undamaged through the animals, be it a mouse and elephant.

Yet other fruits remain unappetizing to animals until they drop to the ground, where they are eaten or scattered when fully rips or rotten.

Lemons come into this category, though it is possible that monkey, baboons or other animals may be fascinated by the bitterness and attack them earlier, giving  themselves an unexpected dose of vitamin C and, of greater benefit to the tree, subsequently spitting out the pipe. 

            Many citrus trees that are natives of and regions have sour fruits to discourage animals from eating it. The flesh of a lemon is there for three main reasons: to add weight so that it will roll a long way after it falls from the tree. To dissuade foraging animals from eating the seeds before they can develop and to supply water and nutrients as the flesh rots around the germinating seeds. The main aim of any seed is to propagate the species, not to feed the local animals. Animals benefit only as a side effect of plants wanting to use them as a form of transport for their seeds.

            The trouble with citrus fruits is that they have been cultivated for so long that nobody knows what their original seeds dispensers actually were. In cultivation, however, they do seem to be eaten by monkeys. May be monkeys like acid tastes more that more than people do. Many tropical fruits are dispersed by becoming over ripe, falling to the ground and being eaten by animals. May be the acid in citrus fruits was meant to act as a deterrent to these foraging animals  so that the fruits and the seeds the contained were left to grow where fell.