Dainty swallowtail
The dainty swallowtail is a medium-sized swallowtail butterfly from Australia. It is not poisonous, but it looks just like a poisonous butterfly, so birds leave it alone. Its caterpillars live on lemon and orange trees.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
When a caterpillar is bothered, it pushes out a soft orange-red fork from behind its head that smells like rotten oranges.
Its caterpillars can grow to about 3.5 centimetres long and are black with orange and blue spots.
Its pupa looks like a snapped-off piece of the stem it hangs on.
A pupa formed in autumn may wait until spring, or even one or two years, before the butterfly comes out.
It spread to South Australia in the 1920s, because people planted citrus orchards there.
Most asked questions about Dainty swallowtail
?What does the dainty swallowtail eat?
The caterpillars eat young citrus leaves, like lemon and orange.
?Is the dainty swallowtail poisonous?
No. It only looks like a poisonous butterfly to fool birds.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Papilio anactus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Dingy swallowtail, Small citrus butterfly
Where the facts come from
- Papilio anactus (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 Aviceda. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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