Yellow palm dart
Cephrenes trichopepla
The yellow palm dart is a small, quick skipper butterfly from Australia and New Guinea. Skippers have chunky bodies and dart about like little arrows. Its caterpillars live on palm trees.
Lives in
Northern and eastern Australia and New Guinea, and lately also Singapore and Sri Lanka
Wingspan
4 cm (1.6 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. Butterflies cannot bite or sting. Just enjoy watching it.
What does it eat?
Like most butterflies, it drinks sweet nectar from flowers. Its caterpillars eat the leaves of many kinds of palms.
How big is it?
How wide are its wings?
🍚wings as wide as 7 grains of rice in a row⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 11 seconds
How big is Yellow palm dart compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
Yellow palm dart about 35 km/h (22 mph)
A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Its wings measure about 4 centimetres from tip to tip.
2
Its caterpillars can damage coconut palms, so growers see it as a pest.
3
It has recently turned up in Singapore and Sri Lanka, far from its home in Australia.
you asked
Most asked questions about Yellow palm dart
?What does the yellow palm dart eat?
The butterflies drink nectar, and the caterpillars eat palm leaves, including coconut palms.
?How big is the yellow palm dart?
Its wingspan is about 40 mm.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cephrenes trichopepla
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Hesperiidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Hesperiidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Cephrenes trichopepla (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 Gihan Jayaweera. 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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