Common wanderer
The common wanderer is a medium-sized butterfly from India and Southeast Asia. The male is pale blue with black veins and wide black edges. The female is black with bluish white streaks and spots, and looks very different.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The female copies the look of another butterfly, the glassy tiger, which birds do not like to eat. This keeps her safe.
A rare kind of female has bright yellow patches at the base of her back wings.
The male's body is covered in long bluish hairs.
It belongs to the whites and yellows, the same family as the cabbage white.
Most asked questions about Common wanderer
?Why does the female common wanderer look like a different butterfly?
She copies the glassy tiger, a butterfly birds avoid, so birds leave her alone too.
?What does the common wanderer caterpillar eat?
The leaves of a caper bush called Capparis zeylanica.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pareronia anais
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Pieridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Pieridae
- Lives on
- Asia
- Also known as
- Malayan wanderer
Where the facts come from
- Pareronia valeria (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 Uajith. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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