To clarify, moths have been around way longer than butterflies, and butterflies evolved from moth‑like ancestors that switched to flying in the daytime. So in an evolutionary sense, butterflies are just a specialised branch of moths, even though we treat them as their own group today in taxonomy. Moths are the OG Lepidoptera.
Okay wait, they’re just the same but they’re different? If moths make cocoons while butterflies form a chrysalis that’s a bigger difference from when they fly and how they hold their wings. What about migration? Many butterflies migrate long distances, do any moths?
And it seems to me that butterflies are indifferent to L A M P
That’ll be because all butterflies are just moths that fly in the daytime. Moths are substantially older and have substantially more variance.
As a side note, the ‘buttetfly’ in the famous kids book ‘The very hungry caterpillar’ is in fact a moth as it comes from a cocoon.
Nature loves to make liars of us, there’s at least one genus of butterfly (Parnassius) that spins a cocoon.
I mean, that’s just plain wrong though.
To clarify, moths have been around way longer than butterflies, and butterflies evolved from moth‑like ancestors that switched to flying in the daytime. So in an evolutionary sense, butterflies are just a specialised branch of moths, even though we treat them as their own group today in taxonomy. Moths are the OG Lepidoptera.
Okay wait, they’re just the same but they’re different? If moths make cocoons while butterflies form a chrysalis that’s a bigger difference from when they fly and how they hold their wings. What about migration? Many butterflies migrate long distances, do any moths?
And it seems to me that butterflies are indifferent to L A M P