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Sticker of Garden commodore
Bug card No. 1792 of 4,939

Garden commodore

Precis archesia
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesGardens and meadows6 legs

The garden commodore is a butterfly from Africa, south of the Sahara desert. You can meet it at any time of the year. The females are a little bigger than the males.

Lives in
Africa south of the Sahara, from Sudan and Kenya down to South Africa
Wingspan
4.5 to 6 cm (1.8 to 2.4 in)
males 45 to 50 mm, females 50 to 60 mm
Top speed
about 15 km/h (9.3 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. Butterflies cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Like other butterflies, it drinks sweet liquids through a long tongue that it keeps rolled up like a spiral. Its caterpillars eat plants such as Plectranthus.
For real!Photo of Garden commodore
Picture by Diego Delso. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Garden commodore wings about 6 cm tip to tip (2.4 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
wings as wide as 2 toy building brickscould fly across a whole football pitch in 25 seconds

How big is Garden commodore compared to YOU?

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

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It flies all year round.

2

Every year there are two big families of new butterflies: one from September to March and one from April to August.

3

Females are bigger than males. Their open wings can be up to 6 centimetres wide.

4

It lives in many African countries, from Sudan and Uganda all the way down to South Africa.

you asked

Most asked questions about Garden commodore

?Where does the garden commodore live?

In Africa south of the Sahara, for example in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

?How big is the garden commodore?

Its open wings are about 4.5 to 6 centimetres wide. The females are the bigger ones.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Precis archesia
Group
Butterflies
Family
Nymphalidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
Lives on
Africa
Also known as
Garden inspector

Where the facts come from

  1. Precis archesia (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Diego Delso. 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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More from the same group: Butterflies

Also at home here: Gardens and meadows

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