Plain tiger
The plain tiger is an orange butterfly with black wing tips, a white band and white dots along the edges. It is a cousin of the monarch butterfly. Its bright colours tell birds: do not eat me, I taste terrible.
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Fun facts
Its caterpillars eat poisonous milkweed and keep the poison in their bodies, so birds that eat them feel sick.
Other butterflies copy its colours so birds leave them alone too.
A painting on a wall in Luxor, Egypt, made about 3,500 years ago, shows this butterfly. It is one of the oldest butterfly pictures ever.
The boy has a black spot with a white centre on each back wing, which is a special scent pocket.
It can live from the seaside up to about 1,500 metres high in the mountains.
Most asked questions about Plain tiger
?Is the plain tiger poisonous?
It is bad tasting to birds because its caterpillar eats poisonous plants. It is harmless to people.
?What does a plain tiger caterpillar eat?
Mostly milkweed and related plants.
?How big is a plain tiger butterfly?
Its wings are about 7 to 8 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Danaus chrysippus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania, Europe, North America
- Also known as
- African queen, African monarch
Where the facts come from
- Danaus chrysippus (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 Jeevan Jose, Kerala, India. 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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