Butterfly
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50 free Butterfly trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
13 free Butterfly trivia questions with answers. Butterfly trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Butterflies trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Which sequence lists the stages of a butterfly's life cycle in order?
Egg, larva, pupa, adult
Egg, larva, pupa, adult: the adult stage is also called the imago, and insects such as grasshoppers skip the pupa and pass through a nymph instead.
Q 02How many distinct wings does a typical butterfly possess?
Four
A forewing and hindwing on each side; the pairs are not hooked together as in moths, but move together through the friction of their overlapping parts.
Q 03What is the name of the straw-like mouthpart that adult butterflies use for feeding?
Proboscis
Adult butterflies use their proboscis, a long, coiled, straw-like mouthpart, to sip liquids such as nectar.
Q 04What do most butterfly caterpillars primarily eat?
Plant leaves
Butterfly caterpillars are primarily herbivorous and feed voraciously on plant leaves, often specializing in specific 'host plants'.
Q 05What is the pupal stage of a butterfly specifically called?
Chrysalis
The pupal stage of a butterfly is known as a chrysalis, which is typically a hard, exposed casing, unlike the silken cocoons spun by most moths.
Q 06What tiny structures cover a butterfly's wings, giving them their color and patterns?
Scales
Butterfly wings are covered in thousands of tiny, overlapping scales, which are modified hairs made of chitin, responsible for their vibrant colors and intricate patterns.
Q 07What primary sensory function do a butterfly's antennae perform?
Smelling
The antennae are richly covered with sensory organs called sensillae, and in most butterfly families they end in a club, unlike the threadlike or feathery antennae of moths.
Q 08Adult butterflies take only liquids; besides nectar, which of these plant fluids do some sip for nourishment?
Tree sap
Tree sap, rotting fruit, dung and even decaying flesh are on the menu for some; many also sip dissolved minerals from wet sand or dirt, a habit known as mud-puddling.
Q 09What is the complete transformation of body form butterflies undergo called?
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis: insects that undergo this complete change of form, from larva through pupa to adult, are called holometabolous, from the Greek for 'whole change'.
Q 10What is the main difference between a butterfly's pupal case and a moth's cocoon?
Cocoons are spun from silk
A butterfly's pupa is a hardened case anchored to a silk pad, while a cocoon is a silk covering the caterpillar spins around itself; moth pupae are often dark and hidden in the soil.
Q 11How many legs does an adult butterfly typically have attached to its thorax?
Six
Like all insects, adult butterflies have six legs, which are attached to their thorax.
Q 12Which of these is NOT one of the three main sections of a butterfly's body?
Pedipalp
Pedipalps are appendages found on spiders and scorpions, not insects; a butterfly's legs and wings all attach to the thorax.
Q 13Besides providing colour, what other function does the covering on a butterfly's wings serve?
Insulation
Insulation: the wing covering traps air and aids thermoregulation, letting a butterfly warm its flight muscles in the sun; its patterns also serve camouflage, mimicry and courtship.
Q 21What is it called when a harmless butterfly imitates a distasteful species to borrow its protection?
Batesian mimicry
Batesian mimicry, named for Henry Walter Bates, is a harmless species copying a distasteful model's warning pattern; some giant swallowtail caterpillars go a different route and simply resemble bird droppings.
Q 22Which sex-determination system do most butterflies use?
ZW, with heterogametic females
Females are ZW and males ZZ, the reverse of the mammalian arrangement.
Q 23The word 'butterfly' descends from a compound word in which language?
Old English
Q 14Butterflies belong to which superfamily of the order Lepidoptera?
Papilionoidea
Papilionoidea: phylogenetic work placed the skippers (Hesperiidae) and the moth-butterflies (Hedylidae) inside the superfamily too, making it equivalent to the traditional grouping Rhopalocera.
Q 15Where are a butterfly's taste receptors located?
On the palps and the feet
On the palps and the feet: contact chemoreceptors on the tarsi let a female test a leaf's chemistry before laying eggs on it, and the labial palps beside the proboscis carry more.
Q 16Roughly how many butterfly species are there worldwide?
About 18,500
About 18,500 butterfly species are known; they live on every continent except Antarctica, with the Neotropics holding the most at around 7,700 species.
Q 17The blues, coppers and hairstreaks belong to which butterfly family?
Lycaenidae
Lycaenidae, the gossamer-winged butterflies, holds over 6,000 species, about 30% of all butterflies, including the blues, coppers and hairstreaks; many of its caterpillars are tended by ants.
Q 18The oldest known butterfly, Protocoeliades kristenseni, was found in the Fur Formation of which country?
Denmark
Denmark: the Fur Formation's diatomite cliffs on the islands of Fur and Mors in Limfjord yield the roughly 55-million-year-old fossil, which belongs to the skipper family, Hesperiidae.
Q 19In most butterfly families, what shape are the antennae?
Clubbed
Clubbed antennae are a quick way to tell a butterfly from a moth, whose antennae are typically threadlike or feathery instead.
Q 20In many butterfly species, mud-puddling is restricted to which individuals?
Males
Males: in many species only males puddle, and the sodium and amino acids they collect are passed to the female as a nuptial gift with the spermatophore during mating.
Old English: the OED's earliest form is butorflēoge, from butor (butter) and flēoge (fly); one theory links the name to the bright yellow male brimstone, and modern Dutch and German use unrelated words.
Q 24The world's largest butterfly, Queen Alexandra's birdwing, is restricted to forests in which country?
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea: the species survives only in lowland forest of Oro Province, around Popondetta; females reach wingspans of 25 to 28 cm, the largest of any butterfly.
Q 25The Homerus swallowtail, Papilio homerus, is endemic to which Caribbean island?
Jamaica
Jamaica: the Homerus swallowtail, with a wingspan up to about 15 cm, is the largest butterfly in the Western Hemisphere and survives in two small populations on the island; it is listed on CITES Appendix I.
Q 26The Queen Alexandra's birdwing was found in 1906 by a collector for which naturalist?
Walter Rothschild
Albert Stewart Meek took the first specimen with a small shotgun, and Rothschild named it after Alexandra of Denmark.
Q 27The western pygmy blue, one of the world's smallest butterflies, has a wingspan of roughly what?
12 to 20 mm
Its wingspan is just 12 to 20 mm, making Brephidium exilis the smallest butterfly in North America; it has spread as far as Hawaii and the Persian Gulf coast.
Q 28The monarch butterfly belongs to which butterfly family?
Nymphalidae
Nymphalidae, the brush-footed butterflies: Danaus plexippus sits in its milkweed subfamily Danainae, and its wingspan is 8.9 to 10.2 cm.
Q 29Which smaller monarch mimic has an extra black stripe across each hindwing?
The viceroy
The viceroy (Limenitis archippus) is smaller than the monarch and carries a black line across each hindwing; both are distasteful, so each reinforces the other's warning to predators.
Q 30Which compounds from their host plants make monarch butterflies toxic to predators?
Cardenolides
Cardenolides, steroid toxins sequestered from milkweed, act on the heart much like digitalis; black-backed orioles and some mice at the winter roosts have learned to eat monarchs anyway.