Description

Entomology bound box

Butterfly: Papilio Antimachus also known as Giant African Swallowtail.

The Antimachus is a toxic and enigmatic butterfly, whose ecology is poorly understood. The juvenile stages, caterpillar and chrysalis, have still not been identified, despite its discovery in 1782! Its exact distribution has yet to be determined with any certainty...

It is also one of the largest butterflies in existence.

This species has been the subject of several expeditions since its discovery with the aim of discovering its juvenile stages, including a French expedition to the Central African Republic in 2019, but none has been able to discover the caterpillar and chrysalis of this butterfly!

During the last expedition in 2019, no caterpillars were found, and the expedition went nowhere. The expedition was even unlucky: even when captured, some specimens were devoured by the cohorts of army ants in their cage before the researchers could recover them...

According to the researchers' hypotheses, the Antimachus derives its toxicity from the ingestion by its caterpillar of the leaves of a thick liana that snakes its way between the tree tops of the African rainforest.

From Central Africa

Dimensions: 26x19.5cm

Entomological box hand-bound by an craftsman bookbinder in Anjou

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