Have you ever wondered where butterflies go when they are not flying? And how they avoid being someone's dinner?

One way some animals escape their predators is by blending in with their surroundings or by imitating other things. Some insects even resemble twigs, leaves, or the eyes of owls! Cool, huh?

With friends or family members cut out 100 white paper butterflies using the pattern on the top of this page. With markers or crayons, color 50 of the butterflies a very bright color such as shocking pink or photocopy the butterfly pattern sheet onto bright pink paper. Color the remaining 50 in a way that helps them blend in with their surroundings. For example, if you have blue striped wallpaper, make some of your butterflies blue striped. If your curtains are green with dots, color some butterflies green with dots, and so on until all your remaining 50 moths blend in with parts of the room.

Ask your friends or family members to leave the room while you place all the brightly colored butterflies randomly around the room and the other 50 on the surfaces that are like their pattern and coloration. You can use rolled pieces of transparent or masking tape to tape the moths on walls. This will not hurt the paint or wallpaper.

Now ask your friends or family to return to the room. They are to pretend they are flying foxes (bats that can see) and they are to capture all the butterflies they can find in 1 minute. You can tell them when to start and when the minute is up. How many of the brightly colored butterflies were captured? How many of the other butterflies? Were color and pattern important in escaping from predators? Which type of butterfly in the population do you think will have survive and reproduce more offspring? Will there be more brightly colored butterflies or more camouflaged butterflies in the next generation?

A very similar thing happened in forested areas of England near factories. Because trees were blackened with soot, the darker moths in the population survived and reproduced. What do you think happened to the moth population when a law was passed to make the factories put filters or cleaners in their smoke stacks?

What is another defense strategy against predators? What if the brightly colored butterflies were bitter to taste? And what if predators upon tasting one bitter brightly colored butterfly learned never to eat another one? What would happen to the population of butterflies? What would be the most prevalent type of butterfly in the population?

Look at the butterflies in your garden. Which of them would have a better chance of escaping predators? Why do you think so? Please don't taste the butterflies!