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Sticker of Dark blue tiger
Bug card No. 1279 of 4,939

Dark blue tiger

Tirumala septentrionis
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesRainforests and jungles6 legs

The dark blue tiger is a large butterfly from India and South-east Asia. Its dark wings are covered in pale blue streaks and spots. It is a great traveller and flies long distances with huge crowds of other butterflies.

Lives in
The Himalayas, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia and South-east Asia
Wingspan
8 to 12 cm (3.1 to 4.5 in)
Top speed
about 21 km/h (13 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
The butterflies drink nectar from flowers. Its caterpillars eat the leaves of certain climbing plants.
For real!Photo of Dark blue tiger
Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Dark blue tiger wings about 12 cm tip to tip (4.5 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
wings as wide as your handcould fly across a whole football pitch in 18 seconds

How big is Dark blue tiger compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

In southern India it makes up 78 out of every 100 butterflies on the move during the migration season.

2

Males and females migrate in the same numbers.

3

Butterflies that grow up in some places get bigger wings, which helps them fly far.

4

It looks a lot like the blue tiger, but it is darker and its blue markings are narrower.

you asked

Most asked questions about Dark blue tiger

?Does the dark blue tiger migrate?

Yes. In southern India huge numbers of dark blue tigers travel together during the migration season.

?How big is the dark blue tiger?

Its wings are about 8 to 11.5 centimetres wide.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Tirumala septentrionis
Group
Butterflies
Family
Nymphalidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
Lives on
Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Tirumala septentrionis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Charles J. Sharp. 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.

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