Colour sergeant
The colour sergeant is a butterfly with black wings and bold bands across them, like stripes on a uniform. The male's bands are snowy white with a hint of shiny blue. The female's bands are orange-yellow and much wider.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its caterpillar is bright green and covered in six rows of fine, branching spines.
The caterpillar has one big brown patch near its back end, which makes it easy to recognise.
Underneath, the wings are brown with the same pale bands, only a bit blurrier.
Different forms of it live in India, Myanmar, the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, and each one looks a little different.
Most asked questions about Colour sergeant
?Where does the colour sergeant live?
In warm tropical parts of South and Southeast Asia, such as India, Myanmar, Malaysia and Borneo.
?How can you tell a male colour sergeant from a female?
The male has white bands on black wings. The female has wider orange-yellow bands.
?What does the colour sergeant caterpillar eat?
Leaves of a tree called Glochidion.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Athyma nefte
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Asia
Where the facts come from
- Athyma nefte (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 Vinayaraj. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A small tip helps keep it online.Leave a tip
Monarch butterfly
Peacock butterfly
Blue morpho
Old World swallowtail
Small white
Eastern tiger swallowtail
Red-tailed stingless bee
Mexican treehopper
Green tortoise beetle
Monkey slug moth
Lesser Goa mustard tarantula
Red-eyed planthopper.jpg){kind=link}