Did you know the largest butterfly in the world has a wingspan of 28cm and weighs 12g?
The female Queen Alexandra’s birdwing (Ornithoptera alexandrae), is the biggest butterfly in the world. It’s so big that the first specimen was brought down with a shotgun.
Found in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, the female Queen Alexandra butterfly has a wingspan in excess of 28cm, while its body is 8cm long. It weighs approx 12g.
The males are slightly smaller, with a wingspan of 27cm.
Who discovered the largest butterfly in the world?
It was first described in 1906 by Albert Stewart Meek, a collector for Walter Rothschild, who named it after Edward VII’s wife, Alexandra of Denmark.
Why is it so big?
The large size of the butterfly enables it to pollinate bigger plants that other insects cannot – however it is rapidly losing its rainforest habitat to palm oil plantations.
What’s the difference between the male and female Queen Alexandra’s birdwing butterfly?
The females are dark brown with rounded wings that have cream patches arranged in two rows of chevrons. The body is cream coloured with a small red furry section on the brown thorax.
The males have smaller, more pointed wings of shimmering emerald and a wingspan of 16-20cm.
The Queen Alexandra’s birdwing, the largest known butterfly species, lives in the forests of Papua New Guinea and lays its eggs on single species of pipevine plant. As trees are felled for timber and palm oil plantations expand, the pipevine and the butterfly are disappearing. pic.twitter.com/tlNlOhZsL3
— Natural History Museum (@NHM_London) July 2, 2021
Queen Alexandra caterpillar
Ornithoptera alexandrae makes one of the coolest-looking caterpillars in the butterfly kingdom: black with bright red spikes. As soon as they hatch, the caterpillars proceed to eat their eggshells, then their host the aristolochia plant (Aristolochia schlecteri) which contains a poisonous substance that makes the caterpillars distasteful to other animals.
Adults do not eat the plant, but sip the nectar with their proboscis. The plant is the only one that females will lay their eggs upon so the young can eat the leaves after hatching.