Southern swallowtail
The southern swallowtail is a big yellow and black butterfly from the mountains. Its back wings end in tails, like a swallow's tail. It is a protected species.
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Fun facts
It looks a lot like the common swallowtail, but its black bands run right across both wings.
Its chrysalis is stone grey and very flat. It is fixed onto stones and looks just like a little chip of stone.
Its caterpillars are easy to find, because the stalks of the plants they nibble turn white.
It lives in mountains, up to around 1700 metres high.
It flies from April to July and has just one generation a year.
Most asked questions about Southern swallowtail
?How big is the southern swallowtail?
Its wings are about 6 to 7 centimetres from tip to tip.
?Where does the southern swallowtail live?
In mountains of southern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and Asia as far as Central Asia.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Papilio alexanor
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Alexanor
Where the facts come from
- Papilio alexanor (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 Albert Vliegenthart. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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