First of all, butterflies play an important role in pollinating flowers and trees. Sucking the nectar of a blossom the butterfly gets coated with pollen so it can transfer the pollen from one plant to the other.

But their hungry caterpillars can also be an agricultural pest feared by farmers who defend with several poisons or other methods. Moths destroying clothes and other textiles are well-known in many parts of the world as well as the ones feeding on food in the pantry.

However, adult butterflies have always impressed people. They inspired poets, musicians, painters and other artists. Collectors and traders got rich, scientists found out interesting facts and still do so. All of them enjoyed these beautiful animals whose appearance stimulated people’s fancy and made them tell legends and stories. In some places butterflies also have a symbolic meaning.

Today science is the most important part of those. Not only biology but also other sciences profit from butterflies. The surface of their wings, for example, will perhaps be a model for computer chips in the future. Butterflies’ wings can absorb light to get the heat which is essential to survive for the animals. The structure of the scales covering the wings distributes the heat over the body. The distance of the ribs on the scales’ surface has about the same size as the wave-length of the absorbed light. Copying the scales’ structure, researchers might be able to solve the problem of heat produced by the components of a computer chip. They just use it the other way round so this surface could enable the chip to dissipate heat easily. (See scales on raster electron microscope photos)

But people already profited from butterflies in former times. 4,000 years ago the Chinese were the first to produce silk with caterpillars of particular butterflies, especially the Silk- Moth (bombyx mori). The color of the silk depends on the species of butterflies producing it.

The caterpillars spin silk to protect from predators when they pupate. When they finished spinning, they were thrown into hot water. This killed them and made it easier to get the thread away from the pupa later. If the caterpillar hatched, it would cut the thread which is 3,000 to 4,000 m long. But people didn’t want a cut thread so the animal had to die. Finally, clothes and other things were made of the silk thread.

The secret of this process and the caterpillars were watched carefully because they meant a lot of money for the people possessing them. Although it was punished hard, a few monks succeeded in stealing some caterpillars and taking them to Europe.

Silk-Moths are the only butterflies that got domestic animals. The domestic form can’t fly any more and looks different. It is not able to survive in nature on its own.