Waiter daggerwing
The waiter daggerwing is a brown butterfly from the warm forests of Central and South America. Each back wing ends in a long, thin tail, like a little dagger. It flies fast and nimbly, and often rests in small groups under leaves.
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Fun facts
Groups of six to twelve males gather on wet sand and mud at streams to drink water full of minerals.
Its eggs are red when they are laid and turn black just before the caterpillar hatches.
The caterpillar has two very long spines on its head. If something bothers it, it swings its spiky head from side to side until the trouble goes away.
It takes about a month or less to grow from an egg into a butterfly.
The females stay high up in the treetops and are much harder to spot than the males.
Most asked questions about Waiter daggerwing
?What does the waiter daggerwing eat?
The butterflies drink flower nectar and sip from wet mud. The caterpillars eat leaves of fig trees and their relatives.
?How big is the waiter daggerwing?
Its open wings are about 7 to 8 centimetres across, not counting the long tails.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Marpesia zerynthia
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Waiter
Where the facts come from
- Marpesia zerynthia (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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