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Sticker of Polydamas swallowtail
Bug card No. 3385 of 4,939

Polydamas swallowtail

Battus polydamas
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesGardens and meadows6 legs

The Polydamas swallowtail is a big black butterfly with a band of yellow spots along the edge of its wings. Unlike most swallowtails, it has no tails on its wings. Underneath, its back wings have a row of red crescents.

Lives in
Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and the southern United States
Wingspan
8.4 to 11 cm (3.3 to 4.3 in)
Top speed
about 20 km/h (12 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting. Its poison only makes it taste bad to birds.
What does it eat?
The butterfly drinks nectar from flowers. Its caterpillar eats only pipevine plants, which are poisonous.
For real!Photo of Polydamas swallowtail
Picture by Hectonichus. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Polydamas swallowtail wings about 11 cm tip to tip (4.3 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
wings as wide as your handcould fly across a whole football pitch in 19 seconds

How big is Polydamas swallowtail compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its caterpillars eat poisonous pipevine plants and keep the poison in their bodies, so birds do not want to eat them.

2

The bigger the caterpillar grows, the more poison it can store.

3

In the tropics it flies all year round.

4

One kind of it lived only on the island of Antigua and has died out.

you asked

Most asked questions about Polydamas swallowtail

?Why does the Polydamas swallowtail have no tails?

It is a swallowtail without the long wing tails, which is why it is also called the tailless swallowtail.

?What does the Polydamas swallowtail caterpillar eat?

Only pipevine plants. Their poison makes the caterpillar taste bad to enemies.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Battus polydamas
Named by
Linnaeus, 1758
Group
Butterflies
Family
Papilionidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
Lives on
North America, South America
Also known as
Gold rim swallowtail, Tailless swallowtail

Where the facts come from

  1. Battus polydamas (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Hectonichus. 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.

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