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Sticker of Big greasy
Bug card No. 0357 of 4,939

Big greasy

Cressida cressida
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesForests and woods6 legs

The big greasy is a swallowtail butterfly with wings you can almost see through. The male has clear front wings with black spots and red spots on his back wings. The female's wings look like old greaseproof baking paper, which is how it got its funny name.

Lives in
Northern Australia, New Guinea, Maluku and Timor, mostly in dry forests
Wingspan
7 to 8 cm (2.8 to 3.1 in)
the male is about 80 mm, the female about 70 mm
Top speed
about 17 km/h (11 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. It tastes bad to birds, so do not try to eat it, but touching is no danger.
What does it eat?
Like other butterflies, the adult drinks nectar. The caterpillars eat poisonous pipevine plants and often eat a whole plant before walking along the ground to find the next one.
For real!Photo of Big greasy
Picture by JKDw. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Big greasy wings about 8 cm tip to tip (3.1 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 2.5 toy building brickscould fly across a whole football pitch in 22 seconds

How big is Big greasy compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The male is bigger than the female, which is unusual for butterflies.

2

The caterpillars eat poisonous plants, and that makes both the caterpillar and the butterfly taste horrible to hungry birds.

3

Its red spots are a warning sign that says: do not eat me.

4

Another butterfly copies the look and flight of the male big greasy so that birds leave it alone too.

5

The first ones were collected in Australia in 1770 by the naturalist Joseph Banks.

you asked

Most asked questions about Big greasy

?Why is it called the big greasy?

The female's see-through wings look like old greaseproof paper.

?Is the big greasy poisonous?

It is not dangerous to touch, but it tastes bad to birds because its caterpillar eats poisonous plants.

?How big is the big greasy?

The male's wings are about 80 millimetres across and the female's about 70.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Cressida cressida
Named by
Fabricius, 1775
Group
Butterflies
Family
Papilionidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
Lives on
Australia and Oceania, Asia
Also known as
Clearwing swallowtail

Where the facts come from

  1. Cressida cressida (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 JKDw. 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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