You may not want to watch this film clip!

Who said butterflies were gentle creatures with no bad habits? This Red Admiral is taking nutrients from an old dog dropping.

Adult Butterflies and Moths feed by sucking liquids through a tube called a Proboscis

Caterpillars of course feed on leaves using their jaws for chewing - to see these, look at the diagram here

This is a hugely enlarged photo of a butterfly's head showing the proboscis rolled up with the eye beside it. Look carefully and you can see that the proboscis is in two halves with a seam up the middle.

The photo on the left is a highly enlarged image taken through a microscope of the outside of the Proboscis tube, and on the left, of one of the half tubes, to show the inside structure.

Some Butterflies and Moths have very long proboscis tubes

The Convolvulus Hawk-moth has a proboscis 14 cm long (that’s nearly six inches!), which it keeps coiled up ready to dip into the trumpet shaped convolvulus flowers that it takes nectar from.

Look at the way this Humming-bird Hawk-moth hovers above the Buddleia flowers and dips its proboscis into the individual tiny trumpets. These summer visitors to our gardens look just like tiny Humming-birds.

Teasel flowers have their nectar at the bottom of long tubes – Brimstone butterflies have long probosces that can reach the nectar in Teasels.

Gatekeepers have much shorter probosces and so have to make do with flowers (like Ragwort) whose nectar is within reach.

Some butterflies and moths do not feed only on nectar. Here is a Red Admiral enjoying a fallen apple - sometimes these butterflies can get quite drunk from drinking this cider!

Oh yuk!

This Purple Emperor is feeding on something much less appetising - an animal poo! It is thought that butterflies that are attracted to animal droppings are looking for the mineral supplements that they have in them. Click here to watch the filmclip of a Red Admiral on dog poo.

And these blue butterflies are going beserk over two lumps of horse dung!

The Wood White also uses its Proboscis and its white-tipped antennae for its courtship display before mating. Click here to find out more about this.

A number of species of moths do not have any working mouthparts - so they cannot feed in their adult stage. Their main job is to find a partner, mate and produce the next generation.

One of these is the impressive Goat Moth whose larva lives in tree trunks eating away at the wood - not surprisingly it grows very slowly and can take five years to develop to the pupa stage!