Dancing amber
The dancing amber is a small orange butterfly with black spots from Africa. It is the most common butterfly of its group, found from Senegal to the Cape. Its bright colours probably warn birds that it tastes bad.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its looks change a lot, especially in the girls. Some girls are dark grey instead of orange.
For a long time people mixed it up with other orange butterflies.
Scientists argued for more than 100 years about whether the butterflies from Madagascar were a different kind. Now they count them as the same kind.
Most asked questions about Dancing amber
?Where does the dancing amber live?
All over Africa south of the Sahara, on Madagascar and in Yemen.
?Why is the dancing amber orange?
Its bright orange with black spots probably warns birds that it tastes bad.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Telchinia serena
- Named by
- Fabricius
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Africa, Asia
- Also known as
- Dancing acraea
Where the facts come from
- Acraea serena (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 Grmanners. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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