Ringlet butterfly
The ringlet is a dark brown butterfly with little round eye spots ringed in yellow. When it has just come out of its pupa, it looks almost black and velvety, with a white fringe on its wings. It flutters slowly along sunny forest edges and between tall grasses.
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Fun facts
The mother does not glue her eggs to anything. She simply drops them while flying slowly and low over the grass.
Its caterpillar comes out to eat at night.
The caterpillar sleeps through winter, but on warm winter evenings it wakes up for a little snack.
Its pupa stands upright in a thin silk cocoon at the bottom of a grass tuft.
The number and size of its eye spots is different from one butterfly to the next.
Most asked questions about Ringlet butterfly
?When can you see the ringlet butterfly?
From mid-June to late August.
?What does the ringlet caterpillar eat?
Many different kinds of grass.
?How big is the ringlet butterfly?
Its wings are about 35 to 42 millimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Aphantopus hyperantus
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Ringlet
Where the facts come from
- Ringlet (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 Ivar Leidus. 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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