Empress Leilia
Asterocampa leilia
The Empress Leilia is a brownish orange butterfly with white and black spots. It lives in dry canyons and scrubland. It has an unusual taste for food: it hardly ever visits flowers.
Lives in
The southwestern United States, such as Arizona and Texas, and Mexico, in canyons, washes and thorn scrub
Wingspan
3.8 to 5.1 cm (1.5 to 2 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. Butterflies cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
The butterfly drinks from dung, tree sap and rotten fruit, and only very rarely from flowers. Its caterpillars eat hackberry leaves.
How big is it?
How wide are its wings?
🧱wings as wide as 1.5 toy building bricks⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 27 seconds
How big is Empress Leilia compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Empress Leilia about 14 km/h (8.7 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Instead of nectar, it likes to sip juice from rotten fruit, sap and even dung.
2
Males wait near hackberry trees for females to come by.
3
It likes canyons, streamsides and dry, sandy washes.
you asked
Most asked questions about Empress Leilia
?What does the Empress Leilia eat?
The butterfly drinks from rotten fruit, sap and dung. The caterpillars eat hackberry leaves.
?Where does the Empress Leilia live?
In the southwestern United States and Mexico, in dry canyons and scrub.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Asterocampa leilia
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Leilia hackberry butterfly, Desert hackberry
Where the facts come from
- Asterocampa leilia (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 pondhawk. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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