Common buckeye
The common buckeye is a brown butterfly with big round eyespots on its wings, outlined in orange, black and blue. The spots look like the eyes of a bigger animal and can startle hungry birds. It loves sunny fields with low plants.
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Fun facts
Each wing has eyespots, so a buckeye shows off eight fake eyes when its wings are open.
Its caterpillar is black with orange spots and many branched, shiny spines.
Ants, wasps and birds prefer to leave alone the caterpillars that have eaten lots of bitter plants.
The chrysalis is brown and prickly, and it wiggles if you touch it too much.
Before turning into a chrysalis, the caterpillar hangs upside down in the shape of the letter J.
Most asked questions about Common buckeye
?Why does the buckeye have eyespots?
The big eyespots look like the eyes of a bigger animal and may scare off hungry birds.
?What does a buckeye caterpillar eat?
It eats bitter plants like plantain. The bitter taste helps protect it from hunters.
?How big is a common buckeye?
Its wings are about 5 to 6.5 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Junonia coenia
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Buckeye
Where the facts come from
- Junonia coenia (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 Rhododendrites. 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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