Q 01/05

What are the four stages of a butterfly's life cycle, in order?

A) Pupa, larva, egg, adult

B) Larva, egg, pupa, adult

C) Egg, pupa, larva, adult

D) Egg, larva, pupa, adult

Answer · why

D) Egg, larva, pupa, adult

Egg, larva, pupa, adult: because the caterpillar and the winged adult look so different and eat different foods, young and adults never compete with e...

Q 02/05

What is the primary function of a butterfly's proboscis?

A) To chew leaves

B) To sip liquid food

C) To lay eggs

D) To sting predators

Answer · why

B) To sip liquid food

To sip liquid food: an adult butterfly has no chewing jaws, so everything it eats must be drunk through the proboscis, two long halves linked together...

Q 03/05

What is the technical term for a fully developed adult butterfly?

A) Instar

B) Imago

C) Nymph

D) Naiad

Answer · why

B) Imago

Imago is Latin for 'image': naturalists saw the winged adult as the true image of its species, revealed once the larva, a word that is Latin for 'mask...

Q 04/05

In chaos theory's 'butterfly effect', a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil might set off what in Texas?

A) A heatwave

B) A flash flood

C) A tornado

D) A drought

Answer · why

C) A tornado

A tornado: meteorologist Edward Lorenz posed the question in a 1972 talk, after finding that rounding off the numbers fed into his computer weather mo...

Q 05/05

Each of a butterfly's two large eyes is a mosaic of many tiny lenses; what is this kind of eye called?

A) A simple eye

B) A compound eye

C) A camera eye

D) A pinhole eye

Answer · why

B) A compound eye

A compound eye gives no sharp image, but it has a wide field of view and is very good at detecting movement, so a butterfly picks out flower shapes an...