Scarce large blue
The scarce large blue is a blue butterfly with a very sneaky secret. Its caterpillar starts life in a flower, then moves into an ants' nest and eats the ant babies. It lives in damp meadows across Europe and Asia, all the way to Japan.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The mother lays her eggs on great burnet, a plant with dark red flower heads, and the young caterpillar bores inside them.
Two kinds of red ants are its usual hosts. The caterpillar sleeps through the winter before it becomes a butterfly.
The male is blue on top, while the female is much darker.
It almost always lands on great burnet flowers and rests with its wings closed.
Meadows where animals graze help this butterfly, because grazing keeps the meadows just right for it.
Most asked questions about Scarce large blue
?What does the scarce large blue caterpillar eat?
First the flower heads of great burnet, and later the grubs inside an ants' nest.
?When can you see the scarce large blue?
The butterflies fly in July and August, in damp meadows where great burnet grows.
?Is the scarce large blue rare?
It lives only in scattered places, but where it does live there can be many of them.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Phengaris teleius
- Named by
- Bergsträsser, 1779
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Scarce large blue (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 Miloš Popović. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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.
Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A small tip helps keep it online.Leave a tip
Monarch butterfly
Peacock butterfly
Blue morpho
Old World swallowtail
Small white
Eastern tiger swallowtail
Northern Saint Andrew's cross spider
Asian jumping mantis
Hunter's little paper wasp
Brunner's stick mantis
Common assassin bug
Green milkweed locust