Orchard swallowtail
The orchard swallowtail is a big black and white butterfly from Australia. The female also has red, orange and blue moon shapes on her back wings. It is a swallowtail, but funnily enough it has no tails on its wings.
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Fun facts
Young caterpillars are brown and white and look like fresh bird poo, so birds leave them alone.
An upset caterpillar pushes out a bright red fork behind its head that smells like citrus.
Its pupa turns grey, green or brown to match the stem it hangs on.
It is the biggest butterfly you usually see in Brisbane, where many people grow citrus trees.
Its eggs are tiny cream balls, only half a millimetre wide.
Most asked questions about Orchard swallowtail
?What does the orchard swallowtail caterpillar eat?
Mostly leaves of citrus trees like lemons and oranges, and their native relatives.
?How big is the orchard swallowtail?
Its wings are about 12 centimetres across in males and 14 in females.
?Why does the caterpillar look like bird poo?
It is a disguise. Birds do not want to eat something that looks like their own droppings.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Papilio aegeus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Large citrus butterfly
Where the facts come from
- Papilio aegeus (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 Summerdrought. 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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