Yes, butterflies and all other insects have both a brain and a heart. The center of a butterfly's nervous system is the subesophageal ganglion and is located in the insect's thorax, not its head. The butterfly has a long chambered heart that runs the length of its body on the upper side.
With Butterfly Wings, There's More Than Meets The Eye
They also discovered a “wing heart” that beats a few dozen times per minute to facilitate the directional flow of insect blood or hemolymph.
According to entomologists, butterflies do not feel pain. Although butterflies know when they are touched, their nervous system does not have pain receptors that registers pain as we know it.
Butterflies feel no pain but if you think it can't survive, a gentle way to send it on the ”Butterfly Heaven” is to place it in a small sandwich bag in your freezer. The butterfly will simply fall asleep and then pass on.
Veins are common to all butterfly wings; they're air-filled tubes that don't carry blood, but instead provide structural support.
While touching a butterfly's wings may not kill it immediately, it could potentially speed up the fading of the colors on the butterfly's wings, wiping out patterns that are used to protect the butterfly from predators. Touching the butterfly's wings could potentially result in a shorter than expected life.
Butterflies – which come from caterpillars – don't have any teeth at all. Instead of chewing up the landscape, butterflies sip nutrition through their straw-like tongues, which are known as proboscis.
While I've written stories about Monarch butterflies before, and I'm sure you've read or watched something about their amazing migration to Mexico, this story will touch on a much darker aspect of their lives: their uncontrollable aggression.
Moths and butterflies can remember what they learned as caterpillars, a study reveals. The findings challenge the accepted wisdom that the insects – brains and all – are completely rewired during metamorphosis, and may provide clues about neural development.
Butterflies don't bite because they can't. Caterpillars munch on leaves and eat voraciously with their chewing mouthparts, and some of them do bite if they feel threatened. But once they become butterflies, they only have a long, curled proboscis, which is like a soft drinking straw—their jaws are gone.
They are social animals & crave companionship, & so bond easily with humans. Insects operate largely on instinctual behaviour. Survival instincts like flight from shadows & sudden movement are hard-wired & inherited. Any insect which does not respond to perceived threats will be eliminated & not pass on its genes.
Many Nymphalidae butterflies have ears and scientists have confirmed hearing in several species using neuroanatomical and neurophysiological methods. Ears are mostly sensitive to sound frequencies between 500 Hz and 6 kHz, overlapping the hearing range of humans.
In conclusion then, perhaps insects display base emotions but whether they feel love, grief, empathy, sympathy or sadness is unlikely. As humans we can feel and demonstrate kindness to an insect, it remains unknown if these emotions are ever reciprocated.
Answer and Explanation: The blood of butterflies and other insects is a colorless, clear liquid tasked only with delivering nutrients to tissues and carrying away waste.
Butterflies do not feel pain. Although butterflies know when they are touched, their nervous system does not have pain receptors that registers pain so this procedure did not cause the butterfly stress or pain.
The main reason for this network of living cells is to regulate wing temperature. Inside the network, there is a wing heart that beats a few times a minute to help control blood flow. The fact that there's a heart inside a butterfly's beautiful wings makes them even more magnificent of a creature.
"The butterfly has an ability to learn," Katori said. "It can discover particular signs that indicate the presence of nectar no matter what the flowers are." Katori then counted their success at finding the nectar after they settled on the flower. The nectar of the fleabane is located deep inside the flower.
Insects can see light that is invisible to humans. The amazing thing about insect vision is that they have photoreceptors that detect ultraviolet light that is invisible to many animals, including you!
First the basics; like humans, butterflies are either male or female. They mate, joining the tips of their abdomens, and the male passes sperm to the female in order to fertilize her eggs. The female then lays her eggs on plants or on the ground. All very straightforward.
Monarch butterfly migration
Of course butterflies don't scream (at least at a frequency that humans can hear!).
Now they are adults, and wings open up a world of possibilities. They compete and flirt, dancing in the air, circling skyward in a butterfly ballet. When they do mate, they join at the abdomen, facing away from each other. How long they stay together varies widely from couple to couple.
While it is important to be extremely gentle when petting a butterfly, the consequences are rarely so dramatic. The dust you may see on your finger after touching a lepidopteran wing is actually made up of tiny wing scales (modified hairs). If too many scales are rubbed away, the wing is more likely to tear or fail.
Butterflies characteristically have slender bodies, antennae with tiny balls on the ends, six legs and four broad, usually colorful wings.
The dimensions of the nipples, estimated by SEM, TEM as well as AFM, appeared to vary among the butterfly species (figures 2–4; table 1). The five investigated papilionid species, having facet lenses with an average diameter of 29±3 μm, had very minor nipples, with height less than or equal to 30 nm.
Many butterflies are also attracted to human skin and suck sweat or blood from cuts with their proboscis. They love wet, sweaty socks and shoes, and absolutely adore the stuff that seeps out latrines.