Rocky Mountain parnassian
Parnassius smintheus
The Rocky Mountain parnassian is a white or pale cream butterfly with red and black spots. It lives high up in mountain meadows. Its bright spots tell birds: I taste bad, do not eat me.
Lives in
The Rocky Mountains of Canada, Alaska and the United States, in high meadows
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Its caterpillars eat the leaves of a stonecrop plant, and the grown-ups drink nectar from the same plant.
How fast is it?
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Rocky Mountain parnassian about 15 km/h (9.3 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
It loves light and stays in open meadows instead of dark forests.
2
Males fly from meadow to meadow looking for females and flowers. Females fly much less.
3
Males come out of their pupa earlier than females.
4
Climate change and people are making its mountain meadows smaller.
you asked
Most asked questions about Rocky Mountain parnassian
?Where does the Rocky Mountain parnassian live?
High in the Rocky Mountains, from Alaska and the Yukon down to New Mexico.
?Why does the Rocky Mountain parnassian have red spots?
The red and black spots warn hungry animals that it tastes bad.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Parnassius smintheus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Rocky Mountain apollo
Where the facts come from
- Parnassius smintheus (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 Sue Elwell https://www.inaturalist.org/people/selwell. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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