Have you ever noticed several butterflies surrounding a muddy puddle or a single butterfly returning over and over to a bunch of wet leaves? I have and for years I often wondered what it was that they were doing. I distinctly remember a lecture in invertebrate biology in my freshman year of college when I finally learned the answer. These butterflies are puddling. Puddling means that they are drinking the water, but it also means so much more. Since adult butterflies eat mostly nectar, there are minerals that they aren’t getting from their diets. When they drink from mud puddles or off of decomposing leaves, they are ingesting those minerals with the water. Most of the minerals are used by the body and the excess fluid is excreted. That’s exactly what this beautiful spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus ilioneus) was doing earlier this week in my yard. I scared it away a couple of times (by accident) by moving to quickly or once when one of the dogs walked over, but it just kept coming back and drinking from the same little spot between the leaves. That area must have had the right combination of minerals because later on the same day, there was a tiger swallowtail in nearly the same area. It’s pretty interesting than animals somehow “know” what the body needs and seek it out.