Citrus swallowtail
The citrus swallowtail is a big butterfly with black and yellow wings and little red and blue eye spots. It lives all over Africa south of the Sahara desert. Its caterpillars love the leaves of lemon and orange trees.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
A young caterpillar is black, yellow and white, so it looks just like a bird dropping. Birds do not want to eat that.
An older caterpillar turns green. When a bird comes close, it pushes out a forked orange horn that gives off a strong smell.
Because of that orange horn, the caterpillars are sometimes called orange dogs.
The female lays her eggs one by one on citrus leaves, and they hatch after about six days.
There can be about three families of these butterflies in one year.
Most asked questions about Citrus swallowtail
?What does the citrus swallowtail caterpillar eat?
It eats leaves, mostly from citrus trees like lemon and orange, and from wild plants of the same family.
?Where does the citrus swallowtail live?
It lives all over Africa south of the Sahara, on Madagascar and in the south of Arabia.
?Is the citrus swallowtail caterpillar dangerous?
No. It cannot hurt you. It only makes a smell to scare away birds.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Papilio demodocus
- Named by
- Esper, 1799
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Africa, Asia
- Also known as
- Christmas butterfly, Orange dog
Where the facts come from
- Papilio demodocus (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 Charles J. Sharp. 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 [email protected] and we will fix it.
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