Butterflies and Moths use their legs for walking, roosting and tasting.

Yes, many butterflies and moths taste through their legs and feet! Fancy having to stand in your food so that you can taste it!

When their feet taste sugar, the proboscis automatically uncoils to drink nectar.

Female butterflies and moths also test the leaves of plants before they lay eggs on them.

Legs as weapons for defence...

This huge Oleander Hawk-moth found in southern Europe and only very rarely in the UK, has sharp defensive spines on its legs - these will help to fend off any would-be attackers!

The Garden Tiger is a moth well known for having very effective warning colours but it also has poisonous spines on its legs! They would give a greedy Blackbird quite a shock!

Insects are animals with 6 legs - true or false?

Answer - well, mainly! Look at these butterflies and count their legs.....

The Comma on the left has FOUR legs, the Grizzled Skipper (centre) and High Brown Fritillary each have six, although the High Brown's front legs are much smaller than the other two pairs.

How many legs has the White Admiral got (above left) ? and the Brown Hairstreak (above right)? What about these two moths - the Pink-barred Sallow on the left and the Pine Processionary moth on the right?

Many of the members of the butterfly family Nymphalidae which includes the Comma, the White Admiral and the fritillaries, have lost their front pair of legs.

The Duke of Burgundy is the only member of the tropical family of butterflies called the Metalmarks. The male 'Dukes' have lost their front legs, but the females have six like most insects.

Caterpillar legs

Butterfly and Moth larvae generally have two sets of legs - the three pairs of true legs which are on the thorax, and the five pairs of 'prolegs' at the end of the abdomen. These are like suckers and help the larva to hold on to the leaf or twig that it is walking on - the last pair of prolegs are on the end segment of the larva. This is the larva of an Elephant Hawk-moth.

This extraordinary looking caterpillar on the left is the larva of the Puss Moth - you can see its three pairs of legs just behind its head and its large sucker prolegs grasping the twig. The claspers at the end of its body have been turned into 'tails'.

This twig-like caterpillar is the larva of one of the Geometrid moths. They are called Geo-metrids because their larvae loop along looking as though they are measuring the earth - from the greek geo for earth and metrid meaning measuring. In the U.S. they are called 'inchworms'.

Can you see the three pairs of true legs just behind the head at the top?