Colorado hairstreak
The Colorado hairstreak is a butterfly with dark purple wings, black edges and little orange spots. Each back wing has a thin tail like a hair. It lives among oak bushes in the mountains of the American southwest.
How big is it?
How wide are its wings?
How big is Colorado hairstreak compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It is the official state insect of Colorado, chosen in 1996.
It is the only butterfly in its group. It has no close sister species.
It needs one special tree, the Gambel oak, for sleeping, eating and laying eggs.
The mum lays her eggs one by one on oak twigs in late summer, and the caterpillars hatch the next spring.
Most asked questions about Colorado hairstreak
?Why is it called a hairstreak?
Probably because of the thin, hair-like tails on its back wings.
?What does the Colorado hairstreak eat?
The butterflies drink tree sap and the caterpillars eat young oak leaves.
?How big is the Colorado hairstreak?
Its wings are about 3.1 to 3.8 centimetres from tip to tip.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hypaurotis crysalus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Colorado hairstreak (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 Megan McCarty. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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.
Monarch butterfly
Peacock butterfly
Blue morpho
Old World swallowtail
Small white
Eastern tiger swallowtail
Cottonwood borer
Western Hercules beetle
Eastern red centipede
Southern giant hornet
Pure green sweat bee
Alder leaf beetle