Vanessa cardui the HOSTS database. The main defense mechanisms of the painted lady butterflies include flight and camouflage. The caterpillars hide in small silk nests on top of leaves from main predators that include wasps, spiders, ants, and birds. "Vanessa cardui" and other painted lady butterflies are bred in schools for educational purposes and used for butterfly releases at hospices, memorial events and weddings. Vanessa cardui Vanessa cardui is a well-known colorful butterfly, known as the painted lady, or in North America as the cosmopolitan. "V. cardui" is one of the most widespread of all butterflies, found on every continent except Antarctica
American painted lady has none. "V. virginiensis" also uniquely features a white dot within the forewing subapical field, set in pink on the underside and usually also in the dorsal side's orange field. The largest spot in the black forewing tips is white in "V. cardui", pale orange in this species, and orange in the West Coast species. The latter also has a purer orange background color of the dorsal side, as opposed to the darker and (especially in "V. virginiensis") redder hue of the other two. A less reliable indicator is the row of black eyespots on the dorsal submarginal hindwing. In