The upperside of the viceroy is orange and black, and looks a lot like the monarch butterfly, except the viceroy has a black line across the hindwing and a single row of white dots in the black band on the edges of their wings. Where monarchs are rare in Florida, Georgia, and the Southwest, viceroys are brown instead of orange and mimic the queen butterfly (Danaus gilippus). Because they look like bad tasting butterflies such as the monarch, they are often avoided by predators. Originally it was thought that viceroy butterflies did not have a bad taste to birds and other predators, but recent studies suggest that, like the monarch, this species is distasteful to birds. They have a wing span of 2 1/2 - 3 3/8 inches (6.3 - 8.6 cm) and are similar in size to the monarch.
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- Knovation Readability Score: 5 (1 low difficulty, 5 high difficulty)
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