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Sticker of Blue-banded eggfly
Bug card No. 0547 of 4,939

Blue-banded eggfly

Hypolimnas alimena
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesRainforests and jungles6 legs

The blue-banded eggfly is a big black butterfly with a row of white dots and a band of blue across its wings. It lives on many islands between Asia and Australia, and in northern and eastern Australia. Its blue has a soft shimmer.

Lives in
Indonesia, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and northern and eastern Australia
Wingspan
8 to 9 cm (3.1 to 3.5 in)
Top speed
about 18 km/h (11 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
The butterfly drinks nectar from flowers. Its caterpillars eat the leaves of a few garden and forest plants, such as the caricature plant.
For real!Photo of Blue-banded eggfly
Picture by Graham Winterflood. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Blue-banded eggfly wings about 9 cm tip to tip (3.5 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 3 toy building brickscould fly across a whole football pitch in 21 seconds

How big is Blue-banded eggfly compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its blue colour does not come from paint-like colour but from tiny structures on the wing scales that bend the light.

2

Its close cousin, the common eggfly, has a brighter blue shine because its tiny wing structures are more complex.

3

The males sit and wait for a female to fly by, instead of chasing other males around.

4

It has more than 20 slightly different kinds, many living on their own islands.

you asked

Most asked questions about Blue-banded eggfly

?Where does the blue-banded eggfly live?

In Indonesia, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and along the north and east of Australia.

?How big is the blue-banded eggfly?

Its open wings are about 8 to 9 centimetres across.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Hypolimnas alimena
Group
Butterflies
Family
Nymphalidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
Lives on
Asia, Australia and Oceania

Where the facts come from

  1. Hypolimnas alimena (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 Graham Winterflood. 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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More from the same group: Butterflies

Also at home here: Rainforests and jungles

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