Red Admiral
Vanessa atalanta
Red Admirals possess chemical receptors on their tarsi, allowing them to taste sugar and nutrients simply by walking on them.
- Scientific name
- Vanessa atalanta
- Taxonomy
- Animalia › Arthropoda › Insecta › Lepidoptera › Nymphalidae › Vanessa
- IUCN Red List status
- Least Concern
- Population trend
- stable
- Biome
- forest
- Habitat
- Woodland borders, moist deciduous forests, meadows, parks, and suburban gardens.
- Diet
- Adults feed primarily on tree sap, fermenting fruit, and floral nectar; larvae feed on the foliage of nettles.
- Range
- North America, Europe, North Africa, Asia, Caribbean, New Zealand
- Size
- 45–60 mm wingspan
- Lifespan
- 6–10 months
- Active
- diurnal
- Threats
- Pesticide application affecting larval host plants and extreme weather events during migration.
- Safe to approach?
- Harmless to humans. They have no sting and cannot bite. Red Admirals frequently land on human skin or clothing to drink perspiration for salts. No special precautions or medical treatments are necessary.
Vanessa atalanta , the red admiral or previously, the red admirable ,is a well-characterized, medium-sized butterfly with black wings, orange bands, and white spots. It has a wingspan of about 2 inches (5 cm). It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae . The red admiral is widely distributed across temperate regions of North Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and New Zealand. It resides in warmer areas, but migrates north in...
Photo: Gilles San Martin, CC-BY-SA, via iNaturalist
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