Golden birdwing

The golden birdwing is a huge butterfly from the warm forests of Asia. The male has black front wings with pale lines and bright golden yellow back wings. When it flies, it is so big that it can look like a small bird.

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Fun facts
The very biggest golden birdwings can have wings almost 20 centimetres wide.
The females are bigger than the males and have dark brown or black wings.
Its black body has small red patches near the head and a yellow tummy.
Its caterpillars are pale brown and covered with long bumps that look like thorns.
It belongs to the swallowtail family, the same family as many big, beautiful butterflies.
Most asked questions about Golden birdwing
?How big is the golden birdwing?
Its wings are usually 15 to 17 centimetres across, and the biggest ones reach almost 20 centimetres.
?Where does the golden birdwing live?
In warm parts of Asia, from northern India and Nepal to China, Southeast Asia and Taiwan.
?What do golden birdwing caterpillars eat?
They eat the leaves of pipevine plants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Troides aeacus
- Named by
- C. & R. Felder, 1860
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Asia
Where the facts come from
- Troides aeacus (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.
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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