Green-banded urania
The green-banded urania is a moth that looks like a butterfly. Its black wings have shiny green stripes and little white tails. Unlike most moths, it flies in the daytime along rainforest rivers.
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Fun facts
It loves rain. It lives only where it rains a lot.
It has a twin on the other side of the Andes mountains that looks almost the same but is a bit smaller.
Scientists think the two twins were once one kind of moth, until the mountains grew up between them millions of years ago.
Now and then it wanders far out to islands in the Caribbean Sea.
It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, one of the very first animals to get a scientific name.
Most asked questions about Green-banded urania
?Is the green-banded urania a butterfly or a moth?
It is a moth, even though it flies by day and is as colourful as a butterfly.
?Where does the green-banded urania live?
In the rainforests of South America east of the Andes, especially along rivers in the Amazon.
?How big is the green-banded urania?
Its open wings are about 7 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Urania leilus
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Uraniidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Uraniidae
- Lives on
- South America
Where the facts come from
- Urania leilus (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 Filo gèn'. 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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