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A BLACK Tiger Swallowtail? Did You Know that One of Our Most Common Butterflies is a Trickster

Hello and happy weekend!

I bet you’ve seen this large, yellow and black butterfly flitting around the flowers in your garden. It’s one of our most common, and largest butterflies that we can see regularly. It’s an eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus.) Did you know this butterfly has a trick up its sleeve? Read on to find out how this butterfly tricks potential predators.

Do you know how to tell a male from a female tiger swallowtail? Male tiger swallowtails are ALWAYS yellow, and do not have as much iridescent blue on their hindwing as the females. Females can be yellow OR black. The black version is known as a dimorphic black form. When they are black they are mimics of the distasteful pipevine swallowtail, and thus, may be spared predation by birds and other predators who have learned not to eat big, dark butterflies. 

Here are a few photos:

A MALE tiger swallowtail does not have as much iridescent blue on its hindwing as the female.
Notice the iridescent blue on the hind wings. This is a female.
Here’s a male and female together, the male is on the top, female on the bottom.

And now here’s a photo of a FEMALE tiger swallowtail with the dark form:

A dark form of the tiger swallowtail butterfly is always a female.

And here are two photos of pipevine swallowtail, the butterfly that the female tiger swallowtail, dark form, is mimicking. 

A pipevine swallowtail with its wings open.
A pipevine swallowtail at cardinal flower, side view.

Hey, did you know that I publish a lot more frequently on my instagram account? Many of these are short posts about some animal or plant I’ve encountered recently. You can follow me on Instagram by clicking here.

Want a little more information? Here’s a post I wrote about Confusing Dark Butterflies. You might enjoy a side-by-side comparison of these butterflies.

One more thing, have you been missing my weekly puzzlers? I’ll be bringing them back next weekend, so stay tuned… and have a great holiday weekend! Hope you have some fun outdoor plans. 

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