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Sticker of Queen butterfly
Bug card No. 3459 of 4,939

Queen butterfly

Danaus gilippus
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesGardens and meadows6 legs

The queen butterfly is a big orange brown butterfly with black edges and little white spots on its wings. It is a close cousin of the famous monarch butterfly. It flutters over meadows, fields and even deserts.

Lives in
North and South America, in meadows, fields, marshes and deserts
Wingspan
8 to 8.5 cm (3.1 to 3.3 in)
Top speed
about 18 km/h (11 mph)
Flying, estimate
What does it eat?
The butterfly drinks nectar from flowers. The caterpillar eats milkweed plants.
For real!Photo of Queen butterfly
Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Queen butterfly wings about 8.5 cm tip to tip (3.3 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 2.5 toy building brickscould fly across a whole football pitch in 21 seconds

How big is Queen butterfly compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its caterpillar is black with white stripes and yellow spots, and it has three pairs of long black threads sticking out of its body.

2

Its chrysalis is pale green with golden spots and hangs from a little silk button, like a necklace pendant.

3

Unlike most butterflies, it has a very tough and bendy outside.

4

A new butterfly comes out of the chrysalis after only 7 to 10 days.

you asked

Most asked questions about Queen butterfly

?What is the difference between a queen and a monarch butterfly?

The queen is darker brown and has no black stripes across the middle of its wings like the monarch.

?What do queen butterfly caterpillars eat?

They eat milkweed plants, which make them taste bad to birds.

?How big is a queen butterfly?

Its wings are about 8 centimetres across.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Danaus gilippus
Group
Butterflies
Family
Nymphalidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
Lives on
North America, South America

Where the facts come from

  1. Queen (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.
  2. Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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