Idas blue
The Idas blue is a small butterfly. The male has shiny blue wings, and the female is brown with a row of orange spots. Underneath, both have grey wings with black dots and an orange band.
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Fun facts
Ants often look after its caterpillars.
The young caterpillars spend the winter asleep.
After a big forest fire in Sweden in 2014, more Idas blues were seen, probably because more of their food plants grew.
It can live high in the mountains, up to 2100 metres.
One kind of Idas blue in California, the lotis blue, has not been seen in the wild since 1994.
Most asked questions about Idas blue
?What does the Idas blue look like?
The male is shiny blue on top, the female is brown with orange spots. Both are grey with black dots underneath.
?How big is an Idas blue?
Its wings measure about 2 to 3 centimetres from tip to tip.
?What do Idas blue caterpillars eat?
Heather, bog bilberry, crowberry and plants of the pea family.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Plebejus idas
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- Northern blue
Where the facts come from
- Plebejus idas (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 Harald Süpfle. 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.
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