(Photo: courtesy of Butterfly Encounters)

The pupa is green with 10 spots that are initially gold, but later turn to silver.

The wings of the adult butterflies are black with blue spots. They have a wingspan of about 7 cms. The butterflies may sometimes be seen scratching the leaves of plants such as:

They appear to suck chemicals from the plants, even wetting dead leaves and then sucking up the moisture.

Male and Female pair
(Photo: courtesy of David Johnston)

The eggs are bullet shaped and pale yellow. They are laid singly on young shoots of a foodplant.

The species is found over most of tropical south-east Asia, from Sri Lanka across to the Philippines, including in Australia:

The butterflies have been observed to survive longer than five months. In Australia, the butterflies perform mass migrations to the south in some years, making a delightful spectacle.

( Australia Post, 1981)		( Samoa, 1986)

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 591-592.

Lois Hughes & Frank Jordan,
Butterflies and Other Invertebrates Club Newsletter, Number 32, March 2004, p. 17.

Elly Scheermeyer,
"Overwintering of Three Australian Danaines: Tirumala hamata, Euploea tulliolus tulliolus and Euploea core corinna" in S. B. Malcolm and M.P. Zalucki (Eds), Biology and Conservation of the Monarch Butterfly, Natural History Museum of Los angeles County, Los Angeles 1993, pp. 345-354.

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