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Sticker of Common four-ring
Bug card No. 1049 of 4,939

Common four-ring

Ypthima huebneri
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesGardens and meadows6 legs

The common four-ring is a small greyish-brown butterfly with eyespots ringed in yellow. Under each back wing it usually has four little eyespots in a curve. That is how it got its name.

Lives in
South India, the Himalayas, Nepal, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indochina
Wingspan
4 to 4.3 cm (1.6 to 1.7 in)
Top speed
about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting people, so you can watch it up close.
What does it eat?
The butterflies visit flowers. The green caterpillars feed on grasses.
For real!Photo of Common four-ring
Picture by Jeevan Jose, Kerala, India. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Common four-ring wings about 4.3 cm tip to tip (1.7 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 7 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 29 seconds

How big is Common four-ring compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The big eyespot near the tip of each front wing has two pupils, like a double eye.

2

Butterflies of the dry season are paler, and their back wing eyespots can be tiny or missing.

3

Its green caterpillar is about 25 millimetres long and has two little tails pointing backwards.

you asked

Most asked questions about Common four-ring

?Why is it called the four-ring?

Because the underside of each back wing usually has four small ringed eyespots.

?How big is the common four-ring?

Its wingspan is about 40 to 43 millimetres.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Ypthima huebneri
Group
Butterflies
Family
Nymphalidae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
Lives on
Asia
Also known as
Common fourring

Where the facts come from

  1. Ypthima huebneri (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 Jeevan Jose, Kerala, India. 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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