One of my favourites. Incidentally, papillons de nuit is French for moth. Papillon translates as butterfly.
11 Likes
Just fyi all tortoises are turtles - they arenât separate groups. Tortoises are nested inside turtles. All the species that have common names that include âtortoiseâ also arenât necessarily monophyletic.
6 Likes
I have a YouTube channel where I post slideshows of plants & critters. My sister-in-law told me that I should make one called âChristmas with Mothsâ so I did. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFEAnIQiD0&t=5s
3 Likes
Yes, butterflies are a subclade of moths⌠so butterflies ARE a subset of moths but all moths are certainly NOT a subset of butterflies! That would be like saying all apes are humans, when humans are simply a subset of apes. Huge difference and not a nitpick when it comes to nested taxonomy.
6 Likes
Seems appropriate.
6 Likes
And in some languages, I believe, damselflies are included as dragonflies although we separate them in English and the two groups do represent different suborders of Odonata.
I suppose moths could be considered butterflies (sensu lato) but maybe not butterflies (sensu stricto). Or the reverse. Iâm no lepidopterist ⌠theyâre all flutterbys to me. ;-)
2 Likes
not related to moths but i have never seen someone use the contraction of âthey areâ like this lol. interesting :)
Sorry, I was lazy to correct it, though I donât know what is interesting about a mistake.
5 Likes
Relatedly, Iâve spent time on spitting the Superfamily butterflies out of the Order Lepidoptera adults general category. What I notice is that any person beyond novice may be able to help with some of the other Superfamilies in adults (or larva or pupa or egg), because there are a ton of excellent/easy photos in there.
Otherwise, Iâll get to the other ones later. But Iâm currently a novice. That âIs this a butterflyâ meme guy is me daily. ;)
Edit: Example view where I would also add a creation date starting time to shave off some âpicked overâ old years:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?page=100&per_page=45&order=asc&hrank=order&lrank=order&taxon_id=47157&term_id=1&term_value_id=2
1 Like
itâs still the same two words, just contracted. not necessarily wrong, just awkward phrasing i suppose. i always think itâs interesting to see things like that because it reminds me of how different contracted words sound when theyâre not used in contexts weâre used to. thatâs all i meant!
1 Like
I also found it interesting. I remember back in the 80s I was at university with a guy from Northern Ireland, who introduced me to the contraction âamnâtâ (am not). It made perfect sense, but I was quite perplexed when I heard it for the first time.
4 Likes
I think that our argument is mainly linguistic: in some languages, there are separate words for butterfly and moth, in other languages, not.
In Spanish, there is the word polilla for moth; but some dictionaries note that this is specifically the clothes moth, Tineola bisselliella. In common usage, I have seen large, conspicuous moths referred to in Spanish as mariposa nocturna, which means nocturnal butterfly.
I rather like the parallelism in LĂĄadan: the butterfly is ĂĄalaĂĄ, the moth is ĂłoloĂł. This gives both words the same basic structure, as the insects have the same basic structure; the word is actually shaped like the insect, with the âlâ forming the body and the symmetrical vowels, the wings; and the word for moth also echoes Ăłol, which means moon.
5 Likes
In Italian, the common name for butterfly is âfarfallaâ, for moth generally is âfalenaâ.
2 Likes
We usually donât use the contraction without a complement. Example:
What are those?
Theyâre moths.
They are? Thatâs interesting!
I agree, and if you look up âpolillaâ in the Spanish version of Wikipedia, it says âLa palabra polilla designa primariamente en [castellano] a diversos [insectos] que proliferan en algunos alimentos o bienes materiales importantes en el hogar como la ropa o los muebles.â (Rough translation: The word âpolillaâ mainly refers to various insects that proliferate in some foods or materials in the home, like clothes or furniture.) It then goes on to discuss its use for Lepidoptera, mentioning the non-taxonomic group Heterocera.
I once heard a friend explain that âla polillaâ had destroyed all the wood trim in the interior of their house (in El Salvador). I think she was referring to termites.
So I prefer to use âmariposa nocturnaâ to refer to moths.
3 Likes
I know, it shouldnât be short on itâs own, but sometimes even when I feel something is wrong, I donât care, because my point was a Saturniid is a butterfly because itâs Lepidoptera, not because itâs in Papilionoidea, but explaining it three times wasnât successful and I gave up.
5 Likes
Just as it is true that all tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises, it could be argued that all butterflies are moths (NOT the reverse) but not all moths are butterflies. The ancestors of butterflies are mothsâmoths came first in the Lepidoptera. The historical lineage of moths (and the Lepidoptera) dates back at least 220 million years and may go back 300 millions years to the Carboniferous. The ancestors of butterflies diverged from the moth lineage only 100 million years ago. Today the known named species in the Lepidoptera number about 160,000 species in the world. Of that number, only about 8% are classified as butterflies.
3 Likes
And to @lisapaloma . I do not believe English is Marinaâs first language. Keep in mind that this is an international forum, and many people are not native English speakers. The vagaries of the English language seem to confuse many native English speakers. Please avoid criticisms of language construction when responding - respond to the general thrust of the statement. I regularly use Google Translate (and my own petit peus Francais) to reply to French colleagues, and none have complained about the way things are phrased. Thanks.
7 Likes
Then there were the kids I knew growing up, at least some of whom insisted that the cabbage white was a moth because it wasnât colorful.
1 Like
Our point is that in English the only Lepidoptera called butterflies are ones in Papilionoidea. All others are called moths. Ways of separating Lepidoptera into different groups are different in other languages but the meme is in English so English rules apply.