Great orange-tip
The great orange-tip is a big white butterfly with bright orange-red patches on the tips of its front wings. The orange is framed with black, like a little painted triangle. It lives in warm parts of Asia.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its wings hold a tiny bit of a poison like the one cone snails use. It helps keep hungry animals from eating it.
There are 28 different kinds of it, living on many different islands in Asia.
On one island the white on its wings is replaced by pure yellow.
Butterflies that hatch in the rainy season look a little different from the ones that hatch in the dry season.
Its caterpillar is green and covered with tiny bumps.
Most asked questions about Great orange-tip
?Where does the great orange-tip live?
In South and Southeast Asia, southern China and southern Japan.
?What does the great orange-tip eat?
The butterfly drinks nectar from flowers, and the caterpillar eats leaves of caper plants.
?Is the great orange-tip poisonous?
Its wings have a little poison to stop animals from eating it, but it is harmless to people who just look at it.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hebomoia glaucippe
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Pieridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Pieridae
- Lives on
- Asia
Where the facts come from
- Hebomoia glaucippe (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 Hectonichus. 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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