Cabbage White Butterflies Mating

This summer I caught these 2 Cabbage White butterflies mating. It's fairly common to see butterflies mating. It might look to us like 2 butterflies trying to ignore each other by looking in opposite directions, but they are one of the insects that breeds in this position. (I think flies and true bugs generally do something similar.)

I'm assuming that the male is the one on the leaf since I think the females are usually an off-white color, but I'm not sure about that. You're supposed to be able to see 2 spots on each forewing of the females and only 1 spot on the each forewing of the male, which would suggest the opposite gender identifications. (Note that spots on the back wings are less reliable for identification. I wish I had an open-wing view of these butterflies.)

July 14, 2021 at Duke Farms
Photo 148187498, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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