Red ring skirt
The red ring skirt is a large butterfly from East Asia. In summer it has a row of red spots near the edge of its back wings, like a ring on a skirt. Butterflies born in spring look different, pale and whitish.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its front wing alone is about 4 to 5 centimetres long.
Cool weather while the caterpillar grows makes a pale spring butterfly, warm weather makes the red-spotted summer one.
It pokes its long tongue into muddy soil to drink water.
The male guards his home area from a high lookout spot.
A female lays around 200 eggs.
Most asked questions about Red ring skirt
?Why is it called the red ring skirt?
Because summer butterflies have a row of red spots around the edge of the back wings.
?What does the red ring skirt eat?
The adults drink tree sap and rotting fruit juice instead of nectar. The caterpillars eat hackberry leaves.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hestina assimilis
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Asia
Where the facts come from
- Hestina assimilis (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 Robert Nash Curator of Entomology Ulster Museum and Brian Mckenna. CC BY 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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