For those of us used to seeing a butterfly wafting high in the sky on a breeze, it is interesting to find that some live mostly on the floor of forests. Instead of flying from flower to flower, the Common Ceres Forester (Euphaedra Ceres) flies over the leaf litter in forests looking for fallen fruit.

As butterflies are cold blooded, they must warm up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 Farenheit) to be able to fly. In the case of the Common Ceres Forester patches of sunlight under the trees, or near a bush, suffice. To keep moist, these butterflies can drink from puddles, and rain drops on leaves. Or they can get water as part of their diet of rotted fruit that they eat through their proboscises (straw-like tubes below their eyes).

One of the smaller African species, Euphaedra Ceres is found in central and western Africa in the Congo, Benin, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon and Cameroon, and has a wingspan of only about 2.5 to 3.1 inches (63 mm to 80 mm).

The male’s beautiful multicolored underside provides camouflage on the ground, while it’s upper wings are mostly a brilliant sky blue. The female’s colors are similar but a little more subdued.

Butterflies are invertebrates, whose skeleton is made of chitin, a sugar polymer. While our fingernails also provide protection for us and are made of keratin, a protein. To keep from drying out butterfly skeletons (or exoskeletons) are located on the outside of their bodies as part of the thorax.

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Sources

Ceres Forester. (2026). Learn Butterflies. https://learnbutterflies.com/ceres-forester/

Common Ceres Forester Euphaedra phaethusa. (2026, May 31). iNaturalist. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/372209-Euphaedra-phaethusa

Euphaedra phaethusa. (2025, December 11). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphaedra_phaethusa

10 weird and wacky facts about butterflies. (2026). Roxane Reid Blog. https://www.roxannereid.co.za/blog/10-weird-and-wacky-facts-about-butterflies