Top 10 Smallest Butterflies in the World

Written by Heather Hall
Updated: June 9, 2023
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Even big butterflies are small in size. Even the largest ones, like the Queen Alexandra Birdwing, with a wingspan of 11 inches and a weight of 0.42 ounces, will fit in a human hand. But there are butterflies whose size is truly minuscule, for they evolved to be able to pollinate the smallest flowers or fill some other niche that can’t be filled by the bigger butterflies. This article lists 10 of the smallest butterflies in the world, from the largest of the smallest to the tiniest.

#10. Smallest Butterflies: Common Sootywing

Smallest Butterflies: Common Sootywing
Dorsal view of a male Common Sootywing butterfly resting on a blade of grass. To find receptive females, males patrol near the ground in sunny places; mating takes place in the morning and afternoon.

©Sari ONeal/Shutterstock.com

As its name implies, this little butterfly with a 1 inch to 1.25-inch wide wingspan has sooty brown wings with white speckles. The hindwings are nearly as large as the forewings or may be even larger, which is a character trait of Sootywings. This insect is found in North America from central Canada down to northern Mexico. It is found in the mountains and farmland and is usually seen from spring to fall. The caterpillar has a dark head and a pale green body and uses amaranth as a host plant.

#9. Smallest Butterflies: Woolly Legs

An insect of a moth, a woolly leg, on a white background

©Butryn Ihor/Shutterstock.com

The Woolly Legs Butterfly is the only African butterfly on this list of smallest butterflies.

Woolly legs, with a wingspan of 3/4 to 1.25 inches, is found in Sub-Saharan Africa. It belongs to the same family as the blue butterflies, and as in the blues, the female is a little larger than the male. It is a rather drab insect with wings and body in shades of brown and white, and it is often mistaken for a moth. Its name is apt because it does indeed have strange-looking wooly legs. The reason for this is that, instead of nectar, they drink the honeydew made by aphids. Ants also like the honeydew produced by aphids, so the butterfly has grown fluffy legs to protect against their bites and stings. The caterpillar of the woolly legs also eats aphids and scale insects and is welcomed in the garden.

#8. Smallest Butterflies: Eastern Tailed Blue

Smallest Butterflies: Eastern Tailed Blue
A male Eastern Tailed-Blue perching on a mint flower in a garden, showing the tiny tail on its hindwings.

©Frode Jacobsen/Shutterstock.com

The blue butterflies, which belong to the Lycaenidae family of butterflies, are some of the smallest in size. This butterfly, with a wingspan of 3/4 of an inch to 1 inch wide, is one of the largest of the smallest. It’s found mainly in eastern North America but is also found in Central America, up the west coast of the United States, and into southern Canada. The wings of the males are a beautiful purple-blue, while those of the females are grayish but sometimes with hints of blue. The underwings are grayish-white with eyespots on each hind wing. The butterfly gets its name because the hindwings each have a tiny tail.

The caterpillar of the eastern tailed blue is dark green with brown and pale green stripes. It feeds on clover and legumes.

#7. Smallest Butterflies: Least Skipper

Smallest Butterflies: Least Skipper
A Least Skipper is collecting nectar from a purple Thistle flower. The butterfly rarely gets higher than a couple of feet above the ground as it slowly and somewhat choppily moves through vegetation.

©Paul Reeves Photography/Shutterstock.com

The least skipper belongs to a huge family of butterflies known for their antennae, which are spaced farther apart than in other butterflies and end in curves. They seem to skip from one plant to the other, which gives them their name. The least is the smallest of the skippers with its 3/4 inch wingspan. It is found east of the Rocky Mountains in marshy areas and often flies low to the ground. The tops of its hind wings are orange while the forewings are brown with orange patches. The underwings are paler orange, and the antennae are clubbed but not curved like those of other skippers.

The least skipper breeds two to four times a year and can be seen from spring to late summer in its northern range and in all but the coldest months in its southern range. In southern Florida, the butterfly is found all year. The host plants for the caterpillar include rice, panic grass, cordgrass, and marsh millet.

#6. Smallest Butterflies: Little Metalmark

Smallest Butterflies: Little Metalmark
Little Metalmark butterfly resting on dried grass, in the Pine Meadows Conservation Area Eustis, Florida

©Archaeopteryx Tours/Shutterstock.com

The little metalmark has a wingspan of 3/4 of an inch and gets its name because its wings bear what looks like metallic markings. It is a North American butterfly that’s largely found in the southeastern United States in uplands, along roads, in pine savannas and sandhills. The wings have a lacy pattern of orange and black and shiny silver. Its eggs are flattened and honeycombed, and the caterpillar is light green and covered with long, bristly hairs. Later, the pupa incorporates the long hair into itself.

This butterfly prefers asters, thistles and other ray flowers, and females lay their eggs one at a time on the undersides of the leaves. The caterpillars are nocturnal and leave little windows in the leaves after they’ve eaten.

#5. Smallest Butterflies: Marine Blue

Smallest Butterflies Marine Blue
Marine Blue butterflies are seen only from April to September in the north, but all year round in the south.

©Charles J. Sharp / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons – License

A bit bigger and of more weight than its western pygmy blue cousin, this butterfly of North and Central America has a 3/4 inch wingspan. It shows up later in the spring than other blues, but in its southern range, it is found year-round. The tops of the wings are purplish-blue on the male, while they are brown with areas of blue on the female. The underside of the wing is tiger-striped light brown and white with blue eyespots on the hind wing.

The marine blue visits a wide variety of flowers including wild buckwheat, wild peas, wild licorice, wisteria, and plumbago. As with other blue butterflies, the caterpillar is sometimes “milked” for its honeydew by ants.

#4. Smallest Butterflies: Cramer’s Mesene

Mesene is a genus in the butterfly family Riodinidae present in the Neotropical realm.

Except for the totally scarlet species of this genus, the species exhibit many local forms. The males have triangular, pointed, brightly colored forewings and small ellipsoidal hindwings.

©Adalbert Seitz, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons – License

The brilliant orange-red wings of this little butterfly, (scientific name: Mesene phareus), warn potential predators that it is poisonous. The males are more vividly colored, and the females are larger, a little duller, and can be thought to have a greater weight. The wings of both sexes have black borders, and the forewings are sharply angled with reddish-black undersides. The wingspan of the Cramer’s Mesene ranges from 1/4 of an inch to about an inch.

Cramer’s Mesene is found in the tropics of South and Central America. It most likely gets its poison from the fact that its caterpillar feeds on the leaves of the Paulinia pinnata plant, which is highly toxic.

#3. Smallest Butterflies: Grizzled Skipper

Smallest Butterflies: Grizzled Skipper
A rare Grizzled Skipper Butterfly (Pyrgus malvae) on a Cowslip flower. The grizzled skipper is a very scarce butterfly from the family Hesperiidae in Britain, but that is widespread throughout Europe. 

©Sandra Standbridge/Shutterstock.com

This insect is given its name because of the pattern of black and white on its wings, whose span ranges from 1/4 of an inch to 1 inch. This coloration makes it look somewhat like a moth. The butterfly found in Europe, with its population concentrated in central and south England. It lives in woods, grasslands, and even around abandoned railroad tracks or factories. The males and females are similar except that the wings of the females are a bit rounder.

The host plants of the caterpillars are largely members of the rose family and include wild strawberries and agrimony. Adults tend to prefer flowers that are blue or violet. The caterpillars spend much of their time in tents they construct out of a leaf of their host plant, but as they grow they wander away from the tent to find more food.

#2. Smallest Butterflies: White-spotted Tadpole

The spotted silver butterfly or Hesperia comma, the silver spotted skipper or common brand skipper, is a butterfly from the family Hesperiidae.
The white-spotted tadpole butterfly has a white spot only on the males. The female has an orange spot.

©Omhans/Shutterstock.com

This little swallowtail butterfly has a wingspan of about 5/8 of an inch. It’s found in Central and South America including the Brazilian and Venezuelan rainforests. The white-spotted tadpole butterfly has dark brown or black wings with a notable eyespot in the center of each forewing. The eyespot is white in the males, while in the females it’s orange. The antennae are clubbed. The females also have broader wings. There are five known species of this butterfly.

The white-spotted tadpole butterfly is known for its slow flight even though it beats its wings rapidly in ways that resemble the wingbeats of wasps. This is probably to deter predators.

#1. Smallest Butterflies: Western Pygmy Blue

Smallest Butterflies: Western Pygmy Blue Butterfly
A tiny brown butterfly native to Arizona called the Western Pygmy-Blue. The blue coloring is visible only when its wings are spread open.

©Deep Desert Photography/Shutterstock.com

Scientists believe this tiny butterfly, with a wingspan of only a little under half an inch to a little over .78 of an inch, is at least the smallest butterfly in North America if not the world. The top of the wings is more copper-colored, though the bases are powder blue. The wing’s underside is also coppery with white around the edges and at the base. There are also black dots at the base and at the edges. Females are bigger than males.

The butterfly is partial to areas with alkaline soils such as deserts and waste areas. It’s native to the American southwest and can be found as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Oregon. It has been introduced into the Persian Gulf. Host plants include salvia, lamb’s tongue, goosefoot, and pigweed, and the caterpillar eats both leaves and flowers of the plants.

Another butterfly in the “blue” butterfly species, and the smallest butterfly in Great Britain, is the small blue. It has a wingspan of 22 millimeters, or 7/8 of an inch, which would tuck it in between our #2 and #3 spot on the list of smallest. They look similar to the pygmy blue, but the blue tint covers more of the wings, but is almost a gray-blue tint. They can be found in Europe, Asia Minor, Transcaucasia, Tian-Shan, Siberia, Russia, Amur, Mongolia, Magadan and Kamchatka.

Summary of the Top 10 Smallest Butterflies in the World

Join us for a look back at the butterflies that topped our list as the smallest in the world:

RankNameSize in InchesLocation
1.Western Pygmy Blue.5-.78Southwest Americas from Oregon to Venezuela
2.White-Spotted Tadpole.625Central and South America
3.Grizzled Skipper.25-1.0Europe, but concentrated in Central and Southern England
4.Cramer’s Mesene.25-1.0Central and South America
5.Marine Blue.75North and Central America
6.Little Metalmark.75North America, mostly southeast United States
7.Least Skipper.75United States, East of the Rocky Mountains
8.Eastern Tailed Blue.75-1.0West and East Coasts of North and Central America
9.Woolly Legs.75-1.0Sub-Saharan Africa
10.Common Sootywing1.0-1.25Central Canada to Northern Mexico

The photo featured at the top of this post is © PaleBlue/Shutterstock.com


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About the Author

Heather Hall is a writer at A-Z Animals, where her primary focus is on plants and animals. Heather has been writing and editing since 2012 and holds a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture. As a resident of the Pacific Northwest, Heather enjoys hiking, gardening, and trail running through the mountains with her dogs.

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