Marbled white
The marbled white is a butterfly with a black and white checkered pattern, like a chessboard or a piece of marble. On a warm sunny day, thousands of them can flutter slowly over a grassy meadow. Even though it looks white, it belongs to the family of brown butterflies.
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Fun facts
The mother does not glue her eggs to a plant. She just sprinkles them among the grass while flying or resting for a moment.
As soon as the caterpillar hatches, it goes to sleep for the winter and only starts eating in spring.
Its caterpillars get a poison from a tiny fungus that grows on grass. The poison makes birds leave them alone.
It was the first butterfly known to take its poison from a fungus.
The caterpillar grows to about 28 millimetres long and is green or yellow with thin stripes.
Most asked questions about Marbled white
?What does the marbled white eat?
The butterflies drink flower nectar. The caterpillars eat grasses.
?Is the marbled white a white butterfly?
Not really. Despite its white and black wings, it belongs to the group of brown butterflies.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Melanargia galathea
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
Where the facts come from
- Melanargia galathea (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 Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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