Which animal tastes with its feet?

When a butterfly is ready to lay eggs, it has to lay them on a leaf that will eventually become food for the caterpillars when they hatch. But how does a butterfly know whether or not that plant is safe for its babies to eat? It knows from the moment it lands on the leaf, because butterflies taste with their feet!

Our taste sensors are located on our tongues – that’s how we know whether something is sweet, sour, salty, or bitter when we put it in our mouths. But a butterfly has taste sensors in its feet. When a mother butterfly lands on a leaf, she tastes it carefully to see whether it’s safe for her babies to eat. If it is, she’ll fill that leaf with tiny eggs that will hatch into baby caterpillars!

Sometimes, many butterflies lay their eggs in one place. In some places in the world, butterflies lay so many eggs that the trees get covered in caterpillars. There are so many that you can actualy hear them munching up the leaves.

Another interesting fact that most people don’t know about butterflies is that many adult butterflies don’t poop! Living things eat because they get energy from food, and anything we don’t use comes out of our bodies again as poop. But it takes a lot of energy to fly, and adult butterflies tend to use up every bit of the nectar they drink to fuel their flights!