Regal fritillary
The regal fritillary is a big, bright orange butterfly with dark back wings covered in rows of spots. Underneath, its wings have bold silvery white spots. It lives on the wide grassy prairies of America and zooms along low over the ground.
How big is it?
How wide are its wings?
How big is Regal fritillary compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
A girl regal fritillary can lay more than 1,000 eggs, maybe even 2,000.
The tiny caterpillars hatch in autumn, hide in the dead leaves and sleep all winter without eating a thing.
In spring the caterpillars wake up just when the violets grow fresh new leaves to eat.
The caterpillar is black with yellow and orange stripes and has soft spikes all over its body.
It has only one family of babies each year, and the grown-up butterflies fly in summer.
Most asked questions about Regal fritillary
?What does a regal fritillary eat?
The butterfly drinks flower nectar, mostly from milkweeds and thistles. The caterpillars eat violet leaves.
?Where does the regal fritillary live?
It lives on the tallgrass prairies in the middle and east of the United States.
?Why is the regal fritillary rare?
Most of the old prairie where it lived has been turned into farms and towns, so it has lost much of its home.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Speyeria idalia
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Regal fritillary (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 Sarah Bailey at English Wikipedia. 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
Carolina wolf spider
Southern green stink bug
Red spider mite
Asian cockroach
Box tree moth
Carolina mantis