Orange daggerwing
The orange daggerwing is a bright orange butterfly from the rainforests of Central and South America. Its wings have a special shape, with long thin points on the back wings like little daggers.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
At night it sleeps in groups under leaves, sometimes up to 60 butterflies together.
If one sleeping butterfly is disturbed, it opens its wings and touches its neighbours, and the warning passes along like falling dominoes.
It lives a very long time for a butterfly. Some were still flying more than 150 days after scientists marked them.
Its caterpillar is yellow with blue-green stripes and has two little horns on its head.
Heavy rain is dangerous for the tiny caterpillars, because they can drown.
Most asked questions about Orange daggerwing
?Where does the orange daggerwing live?
In rainforests from Mexico down to Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, often near rivers and roads.
?Why do daggerwings sleep together?
A group is safer. If one butterfly notices danger, it quickly warns all the others.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Marpesia berania
- Named by
- Hewitson, 1852
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Amber daggerwing
Where the facts come from
- Marpesia berania (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by yakovlev.alexey from Moscow, Russia. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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