Purple Crow Butterfly
Euploea tulliolus
Courting males extrude soft, brush-like organs called hair-pencils from their abdomens, wafting sweet, pheromone-laced scents to entrance potential mates.
- Scientific name
- Euploea tulliolus
- Taxonomy
- Animalia › Arthropoda › Insecta › Lepidoptera › Nymphalidae › Euploea
- IUCN Red List status
- Least Concern
- Population trend
- stable
- Biome
- forest
- Habitat
- Lowland rainforests, coastal vine thickets, and monsoon forest edges
- Diet
- Adults feed on flower nectar and tree sap; larvae consume foliage of vine species such as Malaisia scandens and Ficus.
- Range
- Australia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, Fiji
- Size
- Wingspan of 60 to 75 mm
- Lifespan
- 2 to 4 months as an adult
- Active
- diurnal
- Threats
- Habitat clearing, widespread pesticide spraying, and severe tropical storms.
- Safe to approach?
- Completely harmless to humans. Safe to observe and photograph at close range. Like many milkweed butterflies, it stores noxious cardiac glycosides and alkaloids, making it inedible to predators, but it will not bite, sting, or irritate skin.
Euploea tulliolus , the dwarf crow or small brown crow , is a butterfly found in the Solomon Islands, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and Australia, that belongs to the crows and tigers, that is, the danaid group of the brush-footed butterflies family. It has a wingspan of about 4 to 8 centimeters....
Photo: Cheongweei Gan, CC-BY, via iNaturalist
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