Common bluebottle
The common bluebottle is a black swallowtail butterfly with a bright blue-green band across its wings. It is a super fast flyer with quick reactions, so it is very hard to catch. It lives in the warm rainforests of Asia.
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Fun facts
Its eyes have 15 different kinds of colour sensors. People have only three.
The males gather at the edges of puddles to drink. Sometimes eight of them sit at the same puddle.
In the rainforest it usually flies just above the treetops.
In South India it travels together with other butterflies on long journeys called migrations.
Underneath, its wings have thin red lines and a red spot.
Most asked questions about Common bluebottle
?Where does the common bluebottle live?
In the rainforests of South, East and Southeast Asia, and as far as New Guinea.
?Why do bluebottle butterflies sit on puddles?
The males drink from wet mud at the edges of puddles, often in groups.
?How big is the common bluebottle?
Its wings are about 5.5 to 7.5 centimetres from tip to tip.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Graphium sarpedon
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Papilionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Papilionidae
- Lives on
- Asia, Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Graphium sarpedon (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 Dr. Raju Kasambe. 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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