Beautiful butterfly loves smelly feasts

One of Britain’s rarest and most beautiful butterflies, the Purple Emperor, has some feeding habits that fly in the face of its good looks.

His Majesty, as the species is known to fans, eschews flowers and prefers to gorge on faeces, oak sap, rotting animal carcasses and human sweat.

The insect is also attracted by shito, a smelly fish paste from Ghana, and smelly cheese, but in Victorian times, gamekeepers would lure them down from their tree-top habitat with the rotting carcasses of small animals.

Males, which can grow to the size of small birds, are thugs that attack other insects and birds as big as buzzards, and spend their short lives “drunk on oak sap, brawling in mid-air and chasing virgin females, a butterfly expert said.

Visitors to woodlands may well spot some his year as the hot, humid summer is likely to create near perfect conditions for breeding.*