Asian swallowtail
The Asian swallowtail is a big yellow butterfly with black stripes and long tails on its back wings. Little blue and orange spots shine between the black bands. It flutters through towns, parks, woods and orange orchards in East Asia.
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Fun facts
The young caterpillar looks just like a bird dropping, so birds do not want to eat it.
Its blue scales have no colour of their own. They shine blue because of the way light bounces inside them.
It can travel more than 200 km on its seasonal journeys.
Once a chrysalis rode all the way to New Zealand on a used car from Japan, and a butterfly hatched in a car yard.
Most asked questions about Asian swallowtail
?What does the Asian swallowtail eat?
The butterfly drinks flower nectar. The caterpillars eat leaves of citrus trees and their relatives.
?How big is the Asian swallowtail?
Its wings are about 9 to 11 centimetres across.
?Why does the caterpillar look like bird poop?
Looking like a bird dropping is a disguise. Birds do not want to eat it.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Papilio xuthus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Asia, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Chinese yellow swallowtail, Japanese swallowtail, Korean swallowtail, Xuthus swallowtail
Where the facts come from
- Papilio xuthus (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 Peellden. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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