the.com/lepidoptera
The order where caterpillars quit their job and come back as art.
means The taxonomic order containing butterflies and moths, grouped together for their shared scaly wings and four-stage life cycle from egg to larva to pupa to winged adult.
from From Greek lepis/lepidos, 'scale,' plus pteron, 'wing' — coined in the 1700s by Linnaeus as he built his systematic classification of life. Under a microscope, what looks like dust on a butterfly's wing is actually thousands of tiny overlapping scales, arranged like shingles on a roof, and it's these scales that give the wings their color and pattern — so the name is simply, accurately, 'scale-wings.'
- name origin
- Greek for scale wing, literally dust-covered flight
- taste buds
- butterflies taste with their feet
- moth vs butterfly
- no formal scientific split, just vibes
- species count
- over 180,000 species, mostly moths