Where Do Butterflies Live?
When it comes to exactly where butterflies live, there is no real simple answer because butterflies live all over the place. It all comes down to what season of the year we are talking about and the species of butterfly. So in this article, we will explore some of the different places where butterflies live and why they live there.
First and foremost, you need to know that butterflies are cold-blooded creatures; therefore any hot or warm climate is going to be the best possible place for butterflies to live. That’s why you will find the most butterflies in the tropics, but that does not mean that you will never see a butterfly in states like New York or Michigan. Although you will never see a butterfly in Antarctica or in some of the very arid deserts, as there are simply no food sources for the butterfly and they definitely would not survive in the cold weather, generally speaking, butterflies live in every single country and every single state!
The last count of the different species of butterflies topped out at eighteen thousand butterflies and while a lot of those species can be found in tropical and humid places like California, Hawaii, and Mexico, there are a lot of butterflies that migrate over two thousand miles so they are staying in a warmer climate all the time. Places like New Jersey in the month of May are definitely a tourist�s attraction as all of the butterflies return from their long journey to a warm area in the winter, and settle back in New Jersey when it warms up there!
One of the main things that influences where butterflies live is the food source (see our What do Butterflies Eat? article) available in the area. If a butterfly can not find food, it will move on to a better place where food is available. So if you are looking to attract butterflies to your garden, be sure that you plant a lot of flowers, not only for the butterflies themselves, but also for the caterpillars. When the flowers start to die off in the winter, the butterflies either have to hibernate or move south for the winter.
Having discovered a fondness for insects while pursuing her degree in Biology, Randi Jones was quite bugged to know that people usually dismissed these little creatures as “creepy-crawlies”.
