The World of Minibeasts

Aristocrats -  This Way or That Way: The Purple Emperor

The Purple Emperor is a conspicuous butterfly and not rare. Still, you never may have come across a specimen and you probably never will. The reason for this is its way of life: It lives in the top of trees and hardly ever makes its way to ground. It lives on Honigtau (aphid's droppings - is there a different name for this?) which makes it unneccesary to come down and to collect nectar form flowering plants, as do most other butterflies. Also, it lays eggs on the leaves of trees, so its caterpillars live high up as well. This is why the paths of humans and of the Purple Emperor nearly never cross.

Another way to come across a Purple Emperor is to take a walk in a deciduous forest after a summer rain, that followed a longer dry period. Then the tree top butterflies come down and seek for water from the pools on forest roads, because it is richer in minerals than the water they can get from the drops on the leaves.

On the right, there is a female with a pattern of white bands on a brown ground and red eye-spots on her hind-wing. 

So the male and the female of this species hardly differ by size, but mainly by their colours.

Photographs by José Verkest, Text by Maria Pfeifer