In several Asian countries, Graphium doson is the Common Jay, the most common species in the group of species called Jays. It is common in India, Assam, Bangladesh, Bengal, in the Himalayan foothills, Sri Lanka, China, Indo-China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and some other islands. It is scarce and protected in Japan, where it's also called the Mikado Swallowtail, mikadoageha.
Photo by Jessica Ko.
Well...the Jays have the body structure of the Swallowtail family. English names containing "Swallowtail" tend not to stick to species that don't actually have the tails on their hind wings.
This species has gone through a few scientific names. The genus name was originally Papilio because scientists didn't always know how many different kinds of Swallowtails there are. Later the species was identified with a different genus, Zetides, and now some want to break up the genus Graphium into smaller groups and call this butterfly's genus Idaides. Additionally jason, now usually considered a subspecies of a different species, was sometimes used as the species name when it was thought to belong to this species at all. The subspecies eurypylides and evemonides reflect this species' being easily confused with Graphium eurypylus and G. evemon.
Swallowtails were traditionally named after characters in ancient literature; doson comes from history. Doson was the surname or nickname of King Antigonus of Macedon, who reigned a little more than 200 years BCE.
The Common Jay is well enough documented that meretricious search engines, following a rule of "forcing traffic" to paying sponsors if they can, refuse to show much of what's been published about the living butterflies. The search engines have been paid to show people the most notorious sites of butterfly carcass traffickers, instead. Even science sites like the Inaturalist complex have been pushed down out of sight in Google searches to leave room for everybody trying to make a profit from dead butterflies' bodies. Of course butterflies die, often flying less than a fortnight, and their bodies can then be studied with no possible harm to anyone. Graphium doson is abundant in its habitat, pretty and "exotic" in Europe and America. The position of this web site is that physical collections of butterfly carcasses are obsolete, that unless people are scientifically studying butterflies' biochemistry or DNA they should collect photos of living butterflies rather than filling their homes with moldering corpses; still we can see why this pretty, showy species appeals to collectors. And there may be benefits from allowing search engines to mix carcass trafficking sites in with science sites on searches for lifeforms; it helps remind people that a web search for scientific information is only an introduction to a real study of the science, that an Internet with self-appointed "gatekeepers" is inherently corruptible and thus even less reliable than an Internet where sites and people stand on their merits. All the same, it would be useful if search engines were required to display all search results, and not allow the carcass traffickers to interfere with studies of living creatures.
Photo by Annabils. Nature resists urbanization...
One form of collecting this web site does encourage--collecting photos. Beautiful photos of this species are abundant on the Internet. You can choose which to print at which size, onto what; if you're designing only for personal use, or using photos you took with your own camera, you can print them on posters, signs, shirts, dishes, or ping-pong paddles at Zazzle. However, if at some future time Google gives up the despicable practice of suppressing non-paying sites from search results, then you might want to consider paying for prints of other people's butterfly photos. Currently Wal-Mart is showing one poster featuring Graphium doson for sale, and an independent artist is showing one.
Like the Green Jay, the Common Jay is a good-sized butterfly, not shy of humans, and capable of living and breeding in towns. Its natural habitat is forests where (stop me if you've heard this before) females spend most of their time finding suitable leaves on which to lay their eggs. Males and females look similar, but males are more often observed by humans. These butterflies are found at what Asians consider low altitudes, up to 4000 feet. Males like sunshine; females naturally tend to like deep woods, though they flit out into the sunshine when they choose to place their eggs on cultivated plants.
This species is capable of being a nuisance, even a pest, in gardens where people plant champak, an ornamental species in the magnolia family. In places where these flowers are not native the butterflies are even considered an invasive nuisance. In other places, where the butterflies are native and eat native wild plants, they are protected by law.
So the appearance of a male Graphium doson in Osaka, where the species had not been found before, made news. Had he blown north on a great gust of wind, or had he grown up in Osaka, where people are increasingly planting shrubs Graphium doson can eat? Did his move north have anything to do with global warming?
Common Jays have occasionally been purchased as pupae and allowed to fly in displays in indoor butterfly gardens, like the Reiman Garden, in the US. People licensed to import foreign butterflies into the US have to prove they can keep the butterflies from escaping and becoming pests.
On the whole, however, in their natural habitat they are good pollinators of many plants. Most of their nectar sources don't have English names, but the list includes lantanas, woolly Bidens, and several kinds of Prunus including rosebushes and fruit trees.
Males of this species are also composters. They can reuse water, first drinking, then excreting, then drinking the same liquid again. (They want to build up mineral salts, which they need in order to be able to reproduce.) They also like liquids excreted by larger animals. Female Swallowtails usually don't drink bitter, brackish, or salty liquids for themselves. They need mineral salts, too, but prefer to get them from their mates. Mineral salts are stored in the spermatophore transferred from males to females in the mating process, and part of the complex reproductive system allows the female to digest them, which is probably yet another part of butterfly life humans prefer not to think about. The butterfly body was designed to sort these things.
Photo by Diopapillio. Yes, like most composter butterflies, males become quite friendly with humans in hot weather. Several sources document Graphium doson perching, even posing, on sweaty skin.
The Common Jay's average wingspan is a little under three inches; some individuals measure 3.9 inches, some only 2.5. The wings are basically black above and dark brown below, with small spots bordering rows of larger spots that run together to form broad stripes. These spots are iridescent, often translucent as the wing scales that give them color are thin at best and can wear off; depending on the light they can look bright blue, pale blue, or white.
Like many Swallowtails, Common Jays are full of energy during their short lifetimes, a bit of a challenge to photograph since they fan their wings even while sipping nectar or water. Successful photos usually show a male sipping alone, wings held vertically, but males don't seem to avoid "puddling" together and are also found in large mixed flocks.
Photo by Theintrovertstrail, taken in Thailand.
Like Graphium choredon, Graphium doson sips from white, pink, and yellow flowers but seems to be attracted to turquoise-colored surfaces. Inaturalist's collection of doson photos does not make this attraction overwhelmingly obvious, as its collection of choredon does, but does show doson checking out useless bits of plastic junk, and a street sign, that were vivid blue-green or turquoise blue. If you want to attract this species, as one Inaturalist photographer apparently did, a row of tall plants with small white, pink, and yellow blossoms below a turquoise blue wall may be a good strategy.
Photo by Geechartier, who started a party for some G.d. axion by dropping his sweaty shirt on the ground when he changed.
Several subspecies have been named. Lists of subspecies don't always agree; several sources recognize subspecies that Wikipedia doesn't. This is typical of science in a healthy condition, where new information is always being considered and debated. Some people still think two butterflies are different enough to belong in two distinct subspecies; others think both should be regarded as belonging to one subspecies, perhaps with a name different from either of the older or newer names. Enough of the subspecies are recognized by people who live among these butterflies to justify considering the subspecies individually:
Graphium doson actor is found in Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Actor or Aktor was the name of several minor characters in ancient Greek literature; in Greek it meant "one who leads or carries." Museum specimens of actor are photographed at:
G.d. albidum is poorly documented; the name appears on only some lists. Albidum means "white" in Latin.
Photo identified as axion by Geechartier, taken in Cambodia.
G.d. axion is found from India to China, in Burma and Thailand. In the Iliad, Axion was a prince who was killed in battle. This Blogspot blog post has a gallery of lovely pictures of doson, presumably subspecies axion, since they were found in Vietnam.
G.d. axionides is found in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. It means "son of Axion" and was chosen for a subspecies very similar to G.d. axion.
Photo by Subhendu Khan, who asked to be e-mailed if people copied it from Wikimedia Commons, but Wikimedia Commons failed to show his e-mail address.
G.d. aykut is a newly named subspecies mentioned by only a few sources. There is a place called Aykut in Turkey.
G.d. cleius is probably a misprint for eleius. "Cleius" is only half of various names of characters in ancient literature, but it is found as both a given name and a family name in real life.
G.d. doson, the "nominate subspecies," is found in Sri Lanka.
Photo identified as eleius by Gs5, at Inaturalist. This web site does not post videos but, if you go to
you can find a video that shows this little fellow excreting liquids. The video does not show whether he was thirsty enough to turn around and drink the drop he left on the leaf.
G.d. eleieus is found in India. Not all sources include this subspecies. In the legendary history of ancient Greece, Eleius was a prince who lived to become a king. This and some other subspecies were first described by Fruhsdorfer in German, in the 1880s, and don't seem to have been fully described in English since--at least not online.
G.d. eurypylides is found on Lombok and Sumbawa islands. It means "son of Eurypylus" or, in the case of butterflies, "It may be a subspecies of doson rather than eurypylus, but it looks like eurypylus." This subspecies was formerly classified as a subspecies of eurypylus or of jason, when jason was classified as a distinct species. Eurypylus was a minor character in the Iliad. Its differences from other subspecies include, in addition to slight variations in the spots on the underwings, the male scent folds being black rather than white.
Photo identified as evemonides taken in Malaysia by SL Liew.
Photo of evemonides by Phonebutterfliesjx, documenting that they, too, check out turquoise blue things. This one seems to be inspecting, and possibly composting run-off from, some nasty plastic waste. The composters are wonderful animals.
G.d. evemonides is found on the Malay peninsula, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and some Philippine islands, as well as southern Burma, Thailand, and Singapore. This beautiful photo essay from Singapore, explaining that the butterfly has been found there only recently, has clear photos of every stage in the life cycle:
Evemon or Euaemon was another minor character in the Iliad. The subspecies appulejus, autronicus, and vulso, described by Fruhstorfer in the nineteenth century, are now regarded as varying forms of evemonides. Rothschild later mentioned that this is one of the butterfly species, like our Zebra Swallowtail, that shows seasonal variations.
G.d. gelap is not mentioned on every list. Gelap is a Malay word meaning "dim, dark, obscure, secretive."
Museum specimen of gyndes from Worldfieldguide.com.
G.d. gyndes is found in the Philippines, especially on Busuanga, Dumaran, and Palawan islands. Gyndes was not a human character, but a river mentioned in ancient legendary history; it may or may not have been the same river now called the Diyala, in Iraq.
G.d. hankuronis was described in 1929 as being found on Formosa.
G.d. kajanga is found on Pulau and Tioman islands. Kajang is a place in Selangor, Malaysia.
G.d. kuronis was described in 1929 as being found on Formosa. Matsumura, who included both in a book called Insecta Matsumurana (not available online), treated kuronis and hankuronis as two diferent subspecies.
Photo from Lifeinkochi.net, a students' collective blog, where the butterfly is described in ESL student English.
G.d. mikado is found in Japan. Mikado was the title of a high-ranking official in the old Japanese government. A specimen of this subspecies was formally presented to one as a gift in the nineteenth century. Leech observed in 1887 that even males in this subspecies were larger and more likely to look brown-and-yellow than some other subspecies. Individuals vary within subspecies, and subspecies averages also vary, in size with wingspans typically between two and three inches; mikado's wingspan was said to be three and a half inches. Rothschild observed that mikado had yellow rather than red spots on the underwings.
G.d. nauta is found in the Philippines. Nauta means "sailor" in Greek.
G.d. okibi is a new name found on only a few lists. Okibi means "bonfire" in Japanese, which seems irrelevant to the butterflies. Oki is the name of some islands off the coast of Japan.
Photo identified as perillus taken in Japan by Nakatada Wachi.
G.d. perillus is found in Japan. According to Diodorus Siculus, Perillus or Perilaus was a sculptor in ancient Athens.
Two photos of one butterfly identified as postianus, taken in Taipei by Lijin "Chinaberry" Huang, showing effects of light on the color.
G.d. postianus is found on Taiwan and Batanes island in the Philippines. Postianus means "of the Post" in Latin. Google says the word was first used in the seventeenth century, not as the name of a person, though someone might have thought it was, since the usual word for "of a post" would have been postis. This is the subspecies that was reported in a newspaper called the Post.
Photo by Stevenson1002. All of these butterflies owe their color to iridescent scales on their wings that can look blue-green, white, or yellow depending on the light, but postianus seems to be more often photographed looking yellow and brown rather than black and white or blue.
G.d. rubroplaga is found on Nias island. Rubroplaga means "scarlet fever" in Latin. Butterflies don't usually carry disease bacteria to humans, but people might have thought this composting, sweat-licking species did. Or the name may merely reflect the observation that the red spots on its underwings are as large as the white spots, or larger.
G.d. robinson is found in Vietnam and on Con Son island. It was named only in 2012, and Google doesn't know which Robinson it was named after, or why.
G.d. sangeanus or sangianus is found in some lists but not all. The name looks like an old European Latin reference to St. John, or some place dedicated to him, but search engines offer no explanation.
G.d. sankapura or sankapurum is found on Bawean island. Sankapura is an alternate spelling of Singapore.
G.d. tsushimanus is another recent name found on only a few lists. Tsushima is a chain of small islands off the coast of Japan.
On Sri Lanka the butterflies are considered migratory.
This is one of rhe popular butterflies whose images have appeared on postage:
The life cycle has been neatly documented in this illustrated article, with details on each color change and how long each stage lasts:
Individual butterflies can hypothetically live up to 53 days, according to this simplified chart of how long each skin lasts found at bugs-alive.blogspot.com. Adults fly for 10 to 14 days. Most individual butterflies probably live about forty days.
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Life History: egg 3-4 days instar 1 2-4 days instar 2 2-4 days instar 3 3-4 days instar 4 3-4 days instar 5 4-5 days pupa 9-14 days Total egg to adult 26-39 days
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Scientists have tried to identify a chemical that female butterflies use to select leaves on which to lay eggs. This chemical might be used to steer the butterflies away from garden plants, back into the forests where nobody objects to them. So far it's not been reported as a great success, but a chemical that seems to encourage egg-laying has been named, synthesized, and offered for sale as pinitol. Here is an abstract of the study of how pinitol works in nature.
Eggs are little round beads, ripening from pale green to pale yellow, laid by ones on the undersides of leaves. They measure a little over a millimeter in diameter.
Photo by School of Ecology and Conservation, University of Agricultural Sciences Bangalore.
Caterpillars have the humpbacked look typical of young Swallowtails, sometimes described as a "spindle" shape. Like several of the Jays, Kites, and Swordtails they hatch with several pairs of spines and bristles, which become shorter, simpler, and fewer in number as the caterpillars grow bigger. The bristles are not very sharp and don't contain venom, but add a rough abrasive quality to the skin that probably does not appeal to birds that try to swallow the caterpillars whole.
All Swallowtail caterpillars studied have had osmeteria, but some displayed them readily, even aggressively, and others were hard to induce to display the osmeteria. Graphium doson is one of the species that rarely shows its "stink horns." This may be partly because, especially in its early stages, the caterpillar has proportionately very large bristles at the front and backends.
Photo by Jayant M. Deshpande.
They are known to eat any of about a dozen plants in the custard-apple, laurel, and magnolia families, including plants whose fruits humans eat like soursop and avocado. They can be removed from the garden and set out near wild plants they can eat, instead. They like leaves that have a strong flavor and odor, produced by mildly toxic biochemicals--they like camphor trees.
Photo by Renjus Box.
Of the hatchlings' many bristles, one pair develop into little knobs that resemble eyes and can appear above a stripe that suggests a mouth...the mouth below which the osmeterium can appear as a tongue, the whole designed to allow a helpless caterpillar to look to hungry birds like a bird-eating snake.
Photo by Uma Vaijnath.
Caterpillars and pupae come in different colors--shades of green, brown, or amber. No source claims to know whether colors are determined by hereditary or environmental factors. Individual caterpillars' colors change as they grow and change skins. Typically they hatch with a translucent light brown color, quickly darken in the first instar, then go through brown or olive, brown or green, and green or orange skins as they mature; there are five instars, and fourth-instar caterpillars are longer and thinner than fifth-instar caterpillars. (See this photo essay:
The head, however, is usually amber to orange throughout the caterpillar stage of life. The yellow, green, or brown skin can resemble a garment with ornamental slashes, broader rings of colored skin separated by narrower half-rings of gray,
Photo by Geechartier.
Pupae are camouflaged in considerable detail as dying leaves.
Photo by School of Ecology and Conservation, University of Agricultural Sciences Bangalore.
Photo from Inaturalist; supplied by somebody who spells per screen name with Chinese characters
Like the Green Jay, this species is subject to parasitization during pupation. Sometimes what emerges from a pupa is a long yellowish worm.
Photo by Praveen Tangirala from Karnataka (India).
The life cycle is continuous throughout the year, with several generations completing the full cycle in a year. Here are time-lapse videos showing the transformations from caterpillar to pupa and from pupa to butterfly:
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