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Sticker of Large marble
Bug card No. 2518 of 4,939

Large marble

Euchloe ausonides
Eats: PlantsButterfliesGardens and meadows6 legs

The large marble is a white butterfly with a black pattern at the tips of its front wings. Underneath its back wings it has green marbling, like a pretty stone. It loves sunny meadows and fields.

Lives in
Western North America, from southern Alaska to California and New Mexico
Wingspan
3.8 to 5.1 cm (1.5 to 2 in)
Top speed
about 14 km/h (8.7 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Its caterpillars eat the buds, flowers and seed pods of mustard plants. The adults drink nectar from flowers.
For real!Photo of Large marble
Picture by Ken-ichi Ueda. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Large marble wings about 5.1 cm tip to tip (2 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 1.5 toy building brickscould fly across a whole football pitch in 27 seconds

How big is Large marble compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It flies fast, about 5 metres every second, and often goes 100 metres without a rest.

2

Males patrol about 1 metre above the ground looking for females. They even fly up to white pieces of paper by mistake.

3

A grown-up butterfly lives only about 7 to 9 days.

4

Its caterpillar is green-grey with black dots and yellow and white stripes, and grows to about 2 centimetres.

5

One rare kind, the island marble, was once thought to be gone forever, but it was found again on San Juan Island.

you asked

Most asked questions about Large marble

?What does the large marble eat?

Its caterpillars eat mustard plant buds, flowers and seed pods. The butterflies drink nectar.

?Is the large marble endangered?

The large marble itself is not, but one kind of it, the island marble, is endangered and protected.

?How big is the large marble?

Its wings are about 4 to 5 centimetres from tip to tip.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Euchloe ausonides
Group
Butterflies
Family
Pieridae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Pieridae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Creamy marblewing

Where the facts come from

  1. Euchloe ausonides (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 Ken-ichi Ueda. 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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