Bug card No. 1003 of 4,939

Common brown

Heteronympha merope

The common brown is a brown and orange butterfly from Australia. The female is a bit bigger than the male. Its caterpillars munch on grasses.

Lives in

The southern half of Australia

Wingspan

6 to 7 cm (2.4 to 2.8 in)

Top speed

about 16 km/h (9.9 mph)

Can it hurt you?

Harmless

Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.

What does it eat?

The butterflies drink nectar. Its caterpillars eat many kinds of grass.

How big is it?

wings as wide as 2 toy building brickscould fly across a whole football pitch in 24 seconds

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

A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)

Common brown about 16 km/h (9.9 mph)

A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)

A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)

cool stuff

The male's wings are about 6 centimetres wide and the female's about 7 centimetres.

Because the climate is getting warmer, it now comes out ten days earlier than it did 65 years ago.

It lives only in the southern half of Australia.

you asked

?What does the common brown caterpillar eat?

It eats many kinds of grass.

?How big is the common brown butterfly?

Its wings are about 6 to 7 centimetres wide.

Heteronympha merope (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 Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

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