Alpine black swallowtail

The alpine black swallowtail is a big black butterfly that sparkles. Its wings are sprinkled with green, blue and purple scales, so it shines in the sun. Its back wings end in tails, and the females are even more colourful than the males.

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Fun facts
Its body is black too, dotted with green scales.
Underneath, its wings are brown, and the back wings have red or orange spots.
Females have red and blue spots next to a green band across the wings.
It likes the edges of forests next to grasslands with lots of bushes.
Most asked questions about Alpine black swallowtail
?How big is the alpine black swallowtail?
Its wings measure 12 to 14 centimetres from tip to tip, about the width of a big hand.
?Where does the alpine black swallowtail live?
In Central Asia, Russia, China, Korea and Japan.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Papilio maackii
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Asia
- Also known as
- Alpine swallowtail
Where the facts come from
- Papilio maackii (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 Anaxibia. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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.
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