Common windmill
The common windmill is a big black swallowtail butterfly with long tails on its back wings. It has white patches and red crescents on its hind wings, and its body is bright red. It glides slowly high up in the mountain forests of Asia.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillars can eat pitcher plants, the plants that catch insects in little cups.
A moth that flies in the daytime copies its look and even flies at the same time of year in the same places.
The grown-up butterfly has a nasty smell.
In Kashmir it lives as high as 3400 metres up in the mountains.
It is the most common windmill butterfly in India.
Most asked questions about Common windmill
?How big is the common windmill?
Its wings measure about 11 to 14 centimetres from tip to tip.
?Where does the common windmill live?
In the forests of the Himalayas and southern Asia, from Pakistan to China and Taiwan.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Byasa polyeuctes
- Named by
- Doubleday
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Asia
Where the facts come from
- Byasa polyeuctes (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 Peellden. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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