Great purple hairstreak
The great purple hairstreak is a dazzling little butterfly. On top its wings flash shiny blue with black edges. Underneath they are black with orange-gold spots, and its tummy is bright orange. It has two thin tails on each back wing.
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Fun facts
Its back wings have a fake head. The tails look like feelers and the orange spots look like eyes, so birds peck at the wrong end.
When it sits, it turns so its real head points down and the fake head points up.
Its caterpillars get poison from the mistletoe they eat, and they keep it even as butterflies.
The green caterpillars look just like mistletoe leaves, so they are very hard to spot.
A mum lays up to about twenty eggs, one by one, on different mistletoe leaves.
Most asked questions about Great purple hairstreak
?Is the great purple hairstreak really purple?
Not really. It is shiny blue on top and black underneath, even though its name says purple.
?What does the great purple hairstreak eat?
The caterpillars eat mistletoe. The butterflies visit flowers.
?How big is the great purple hairstreak?
Its wings are about 3 to 4 centimetres from tip to tip.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Atlides halesus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Great blue hairstreak
Where the facts come from
- Great purple hairstreak (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 Pieter Cramer (1721 - 1776) & Caspar Stoll (c.1725/1730 - 1791). Public domain, 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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