Glasswing butterfly
The glasswing butterfly has wings you can see right through, like little windows with dark brown frames. This helps it hide, because birds look straight through it. It lives in the rainforests of Central and South America.
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Fun facts
Its wings look delicate, but it can carry up to 40 times its own weight.
In Spanish it is called espejitos, which means little mirrors.
It eats poisonous plants so that birds find it horrible to taste.
It can fly up to 19 kilometres in a day when it travels.
Its shiny caterpillar reflects light so well that it is almost invisible to hunters.
Most asked questions about Glasswing butterfly
?Why are the glasswing butterfly's wings see-through?
Its wings let light pass through without bouncing it back, so they look like glass. This helps it hide from birds.
?Where does the glasswing butterfly live?
In rainforests in Central America and northern South America.
?How big is a glasswing butterfly?
Its wings are about 5.6 to 6.1 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Greta oto
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Greta oto (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 David Tiller. 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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