Queen butterfly
The queen butterfly is a big orange brown butterfly with black edges and little white spots on its wings. It is a close cousin of the famous monarch butterfly. It flutters over meadows, fields and even deserts.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillar is black with white stripes and yellow spots, and it has three pairs of long black threads sticking out of its body.
The caterpillar gets bad tasting chemicals from the plants it eats, so many birds leave it alone.
Its chrysalis is pale green with golden spots and hangs from a little silk button, like a necklace pendant.
Unlike most butterflies, it has a very tough and bendy outside.
A new butterfly comes out of the chrysalis after only 7 to 10 days.
Most asked questions about Queen butterfly
?What is the difference between a queen and a monarch butterfly?
The queen is darker brown and has no black stripes across the middle of its wings like the monarch.
?What do queen butterfly caterpillars eat?
They eat milkweed plants, which make them taste bad to birds.
?How big is a queen butterfly?
Its wings are about 8 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Danaus gilippus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Queen (butterfly) (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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