Plains cupid
The plains cupid is a small butterfly from South and South-east Asia. The boy is a soft lavender blue on top, and the girl is brown with a blue shimmer. It is one of the very few butterflies whose caterpillars can eat cycad leaves.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Cycad leaves are poisonous to most animals with backbones, but its caterpillars eat them anyway.
Butterflies born in the rainy season look a little different from the ones born in the dry season.
Its caterpillars can be bright green or dark reddish purple, and hardly any two look exactly alike.
When fully grown, the caterpillar is only a little over a centimetre long.
Its black feelers have white rings, like a tiny striped stick.
Most asked questions about Plains cupid
?What does the plains cupid eat?
The butterflies drink nectar. The caterpillars eat cycad leaves.
?Why is it called the cycad blue?
Because the boy is blue and its caterpillars live on cycads.
?Is the plains cupid harmful?
No. The butterfly is harmless to people.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Luthrodes pandava
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- Asia
- Also known as
- Cycad blue
Where the facts come from
- Luthrodes pandava (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 Bayxid01. 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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