Is a moth a butterfly? How do butterflies fly?

Butterflies, commonly known as "butterflies", are a general term for animals in the phylum Arthropoda, class Insecta, order Lepidoptera, and suborder Hammerhorn. There are about 14,000 species in the world, most of which are distributed in the Americas, especially in the Amazon River Basin. There are 1,200 species in China. So are moths butterflies? How do butterflies fly? Let's take a look at the introduction of Encyclopedia Knowledge Network!

Contents of this article

1. Is a moth a butterfly?

2. How do butterflies fly?

3. The elegant name for butterflies used by ancient people

Is a moth a butterfly?

Moths are not butterflies. Moths generally refer to fluttering moths, which are characterized by large wings, large movements when flapping, diverse antennae, and wings folded when at rest, while butterflies have smaller wings, and antennae that are generally club-shaped or hammer-shaped, and wings are generally open when at rest.

How butterflies fly

Butterflies fly by flapping their wings and using the air currents to fly forward. Generally, the wings of a butterfly are more than ten times larger than its body, so a slight flap can generate a lot of buoyancy. Butterflies' wings are flat, so they can only fly by flapping their wings with the help of rising air currents.

The ancients' elegant name for butterflies

The ancients used elegant names for butterflies, such as flower thief, jade waist slave, and Hudie. The word "Hudie" comes from Li Bai's "Ancient Style·Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Hudie". "Flower thief and jade waist slave" comes from Wen Tingyun's "Qingyi Lu·Flower thief", which means that butterflies are like thieves in the flowers and maids fiddling with their bodies. The poet Wen Tingyun once got the first line of the couplet "Honey official golden wing messenger", but no one could come up with the second line. So Wen Tingyun made the second line himself "Flower thief and jade waist slave", which compares bees collecting honey to government messengers, while butterflies that only eat honey but do not collect honey are like thieves. Li Bai borrowed the allusion of butterflies and Zhuang Zhou in "Ancient Style·Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Hudie" to express the view that life is unpredictable and things are impermanent.