In French they are all butterflies (papillons). There once was a distinction between butterflies and night butterflies (moths) but apparently it’s now obsolete and they are just all lepidoptera.
That seems crazy. All butterflies come from moths, so it’d make more sense for Papillon to mean moth. It’s like calling everything from the order Rodentia a Capybara, or everything in Eulipotyphla a hedgehog, both things within those orders in smaller numbers.
![The dangers of camping [Mr. Lovenstein]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d1ac3f18-2fab-4e67-ac7e-06e993d71032.png){kind=link}
Butterflies are considered to have evolved from moths.
In French they are all butterflies (papillons). There once was a distinction between butterflies and night butterflies (moths) but apparently it’s now obsolete and they are just all lepidoptera.
That seems crazy. All butterflies come from moths, so it’d make more sense for Papillon to mean moth. It’s like calling everything from the order Rodentia a Capybara, or everything in Eulipotyphla a hedgehog, both things within those orders in smaller numbers.
Weirdly enough, language largelt evolves independently from other species.