Painted lady
The painted lady is an orange butterfly with black patches and white spots near its wing tips. It lives in more places than any other butterfly in the world. It is a champion traveller that flies huge distances every year.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Painted ladies from Britain fly all the way to Africa and back, a trip of about 14,500 kilometres, shared by up to six generations.
On the way south they fly very high in the sky, so people hardly ever see them go.
Some painted ladies have flown from Iceland all the way to the Sahara Desert.
In 2019, after lots of rain, about a billion painted ladies flew over Israel.
Rainy winters in the desert make lots of plants grow, which can start giant painted lady journeys.
Most asked questions about Painted lady
?Where do painted lady butterflies migrate?
Many fly north from Africa to Europe in spring and back south in autumn, high up in the sky.
?What do painted lady caterpillars eat?
Mostly thistles and other plants of the daisy family. They can eat more than 300 kinds of plants.
?Where does the painted lady live?
Almost everywhere. It is found on every continent except Antarctica.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Vanessa cardui
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Cosmopolitan butterfly
Where the facts come from
- Vanessa cardui (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 Jean-Pol GRANDMONT. CC BY 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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