Common tiger butterfly

The common tiger is a big orange butterfly with thick black lines along its wing veins and black edges dotted with white. It looks a lot like the famous monarch butterfly. It flies slowly and boldly, because birds know it tastes awful.

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Fun facts
If a bird grabs it, it plays dead. Its tough body often survives, and it flies off again.
Other butterflies copy its colours, so birds leave them alone too.
Its caterpillar is black with bluish white and yellow spots.
The male has a small pouch on each back wing.
Most asked questions about Common tiger butterfly
?How is the common tiger different from the monarch?
They look very alike, but the common tiger lives in Asia and Australia, while the monarch lives mainly in the Americas.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Danaus genutia
- Named by
- Cramer, 1779
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Asia, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Striped tiger
Where the facts come from
- Danaus genutia (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 Charles J. Sharp. 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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