Alcon blue
The Alcon blue is a small butterfly with a big trick. The male is deep blue on top and the female is dark brown. Its caterpillar fools ants into carrying it into their nest and feeding it like one of their own babies.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The caterpillar drops to the ground and waits for ants. It smells just like an ant baby, so the ants carry it home.
Inside the nest, nurse ants feed it, just like their own babies. Scientists call this the cuckoo trick.
Because ants give it extra care, many Alcon caterpillars can live in one ant nest.
When it has grown, it turns into a pupa in the nest. The new butterfly then crawls out of the ants' home.
A Dutch kind of Alcon blue lived only in the Netherlands and disappeared in 1979.
Most asked questions about Alcon blue
?Why do ants look after the Alcon blue caterpillar?
The caterpillar smells like an ant baby, so the ants are fooled and carry it into their nest and feed it.
?What does the Alcon blue caterpillar eat?
First the flowers of marsh gentian, and later food that the ants feed it in their nest.
?When can you see the Alcon blue?
In mid to late summer, on damp meadows where gentians grow.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Phengaris alcon
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Alcon large blue
Where the facts come from
- Phengaris alcon (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 Svdmolen. 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 [email protected] and we will fix it.
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