Chinese windmill
Byasa alcinous
The Chinese windmill is a big swallowtail butterfly with black or dark brown wings. Its back wings have long tails and a row of red spots along the edge. Its body is black and bright red.
Lives in
East Asia, from Bhutan and eastern China to Korea and Japan, in forests
Wingspan
9 to 10 cm (3.5 to 3.9 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Its caterpillars eat the leaves of pipevine plants.
How big is it?
How wide are its wings?
✋wings as wide as your hand⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 20 seconds
How big is Chinese windmill compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Chinese windmill about 19 km/h (12 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Its wings can be about 9 to 10 centimetres across, wider than a grown-up's palm.
2
It flies from May to August and has two families of young each summer.
3
It spends the winter as a chrysalis.
4
Several different kinds of it live on different islands of Japan.
you asked
Most asked questions about Chinese windmill
?How big is the Chinese windmill?
Its wings are about 9 to 10 centimetres across.
?What does the Chinese windmill caterpillar eat?
It eats pipevine plants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Byasa alcinous
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Asia
Where the facts come from
- Byasa alcinous (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 B. Wienker. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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