Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Bold Hackberry Emperor Butterfly

By: Tom Berg

Although many species of butterflies in North America are shy of humans and fly away if we get too close, the Hackberry Emperor butterfly often acts just the opposite.  These small butterflies routinely fly in circles around a person and then boldly land right on their skin!  They may be daring, but they are not crazy.  They are usually merely interested in ‘licking’ the sweat on people’s skin to obtain the salts that are in the sweat.

Hackberry emperors, also known simply as hackberry butterflies, get their name from the tree that is the host plant for their caterpillars: the hackberry tree.  These butterflies will only lay their eggs on hackberry leaves, similar to monarch butterflies that will only lay their eggs on milkweed plants.

Hackberry butterflies are generally brown or tan in color, with a row of white or blackish dots along the edge of their wings.  Their hind wings have several small, but very distinctive eyespots that are black with a light blue center.  These eyespots are also ringed with a yellowish color.

Even though hackberry emperor caterpillars will only eat the leaves of hackberry trees, the adult butterflies eat a wide variety of foods.  Surprisingly, they eat very little nectar from flowers, and they very rarely even land on flowers.  They much prefer to feed on the juices from decaying fruit, from dead and decaying animals like squirrels, snakes and other critters, and even from animal dung.

They routinely land on muddy ground near lakes, streams and other waterways to drink water, but also to extract minerals from the mud.  As mentioned earlier, they love to land on humans to extract sodium from the sweat on our skin.

The bold hackberry emperor butterfly can be found across much of North America, from eastern Canada all the way south to Florida, and even farther south into central Mexico.  They are not found in the more northern states west of the Great Lakes, and they are also absent from the west coast.  Just remember, if one lands on your arm it is not going to bite you – it just wants a little of your sweat!

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