Giant swallowtail
The giant swallowtail is the biggest butterfly in North America. Its wings are black with bright yellow stripes, and the back wings have little tails. Its caterpillar has a clever trick: it looks just like a bird dropping, so hungry birds leave it alone.
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Fun facts
Farmers call its caterpillar the orange dog, because it eats the leaves of orange trees.
The caterpillar can push out a smelly fork from behind its head to scare away wasps and other enemies.
Its chrysalis is brown and blotchy and looks like a bit of dead twig.
The mother lays her eggs one at a time on the top of a leaf, always on a plant the caterpillar can eat.
Females are a bit smaller than males. A big male can have wings 19 centimetres across.
Most asked questions about Giant swallowtail
?How big is a giant swallowtail?
Its wings are usually about 14 to 15 centimetres across, and the biggest reach about 19 centimetres.
?What does the giant swallowtail caterpillar eat?
Leaves of citrus trees like oranges and lemons, and plants in the same family, such as prickly ash.
?Why does the caterpillar look like bird poo?
It is camouflage. Birds and other hunters do not want to eat a bird dropping, so they leave it alone.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Papilio cresphontes
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Eastern giant swallowtail
Where the facts come from
- Papilio cresphontes (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 D. Gordon E. Robertson. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same 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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