Great eggfly
The great eggfly is a big black butterfly. The male has white spots on his wings that shine purple and blue in the sun. The females look very different from the males, and from each other too.
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Fun facts
The shine on the male's spots does not come from paint. Tiny structures on its wing scales bend the light into colours.
Some females copy the look of another butterfly that birds do not like to eat. That way birds leave them alone too.
A male picks a favourite spot and comes back to guard it day after day, sometimes for 54 days.
When a caterpillar hatches, the first thing it eats is its own eggshell.
Strong winds sometimes blow these butterflies all the way from Australia to New Zealand, where people call it the blue moon butterfly.
Most asked questions about Great eggfly
?What does a great eggfly eat?
The butterflies drink flower nectar. The caterpillars eat leaves of many plants.
?How big is a great eggfly?
Its wings are about 7 to 8.5 centimetres from tip to tip.
?Why do males and females look different?
The male is black with shiny spots, but females come in many patterns. Some females copy a butterfly that tastes bad to birds.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hypolimnas bolina
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Common eggfly, Varied eggfly, Blue moon butterfly
Where the facts come from
- Hypolimnas bolina (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 tompagenet. CC BY-SA 2.0, 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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