Western giant swallowtail
The western giant swallowtail is a big dark butterfly with two bands of corn-yellow spots across its wings and a tail on each back wing. Near the tail it has a red eyespot with a blue moon shape above it.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its young caterpillar looks just like a bird dropping, so birds leave it alone.
If a big caterpillar is startled, it lifts its head and puffs up to show two fake eyes. Then it pushes out a red forked horn.
Its pupa looks like a piece of bark and gets darker or lighter to match what it hangs on.
For more than 100 years people mixed it up with another swallowtail. DNA showed in 2014 that it is its own species.
Each of its front wings is 5 to almost 6 centimetres long.
Most asked questions about Western giant swallowtail
?What does the western giant swallowtail caterpillar look like?
Like a bird dropping. When it is scared it shows fake eyes and a red forked horn.
?What does the western giant swallowtail eat?
The butterflies visit flowers. The caterpillars eat citrus leaves and some wild plants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Heraclides rumiko
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Papilio rumiko (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 Kojiro Shiraiwa, Qian Cong, Nick V. Grishin. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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