Viceroy butterfly
The viceroy is an orange and black butterfly that looks almost exactly like the monarch butterfly. You can tell them apart by a thin black line that curves across its back wings. Both butterflies taste bad to birds, so looking alike helps protect them both.
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Fun facts
The caterpillar and the chrysalis look like bird droppings, so hungry birds leave them alone.
The caterpillars eat willow leaves and keep a bitter substance from them in their bodies.
It is the state butterfly of Kentucky.
In Florida and Mexico it changes its look to match other local orange butterflies instead of the monarch.
It flies only in daytime, mostly in the late morning and early afternoon.
Most asked questions about Viceroy butterfly
?How can you tell a viceroy from a monarch?
The viceroy is smaller and has a black line running across its back wings that the monarch does not have.
?Is the viceroy poisonous?
It tastes bitter and upsets birds' tummies, but it is harmless to people.
?What do viceroy caterpillars eat?
They eat leaves of willows, poplars and cottonwoods.
Myth buster
Myth: The viceroy is a tasty butterfly that just pretends to be a bad-tasting monarch.
Truth: No. People believed this for a long time, but tests showed that birds find it just as nasty as the monarch. The two warn birds together.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Limenitis archippus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Viceroy (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 Benny Mazur from Toledo, OH. CC BY 2.0, 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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