Graphium procles is sometimes called the Blue Triangle, Kinabalu Bluebottle, or Kinabalu Jay. (To English-speaking Asians "bluebottle" and "jay" primarily mean showy butterflies; the flies and birds we call by those names don't live there.)
Photo by Jonathan Soong.
In Greek literature Procles was a Spartan war chief, remembered as a detail of legal history; he was agreed to have earned a title, but told he was disqualified for it because he wasn't born in the city.
Graphium procles is rare, and seldom seen, because it lives in mountain forests at altitudes above 3300 feet. Mt Kinabalu is the mountain where it has most often been found. Today the mountain forests are somewhat threatened by human activity, and so are their resident wildlife species, including Graphium procles. This species' habitat has always been very small, its population very low; if its habitat or population shrink any further, it could easily go extinct.
In the right times and places, puddle-sipping males may be the most commonly observed Graphiums in their rarefied range. However, no expert has yet presumed to know enough about the females and young to have written a description of them. When scientists think that the female of a butterfly species is much more rare than the male, this often turns out to be because some females look like the males and others look different...but in any case female Graphiums tend to lurk in the woods where they are seldom observed by humans.
The wingspan averages about 2.5 inches.
Native to Borneo, Graphium procles has also been found on Sabah island and may stray to other locations, though a report of it in Africa was almost certainly a mistake (or an accident).
Photo by Cis88, Sabah, March 2023, documenting puddling behavior. Many male Swallowtails spend a lot of time sipping water, often preferring brackish or even polluted water to fresh, because they are composters (though they also pollinate). Their reproductive cycle requires high levels of minerals they are designed to extract from water, returning cleaner water to the soil. The Swallowtails are large enough that a careful photographer with a very good camera can capture the details of this process...
Photo by Itsmemei. If you don't see the tiny drop of purified water on his back end, enlarge the photo.
Photo by AlbertKang, Sabah, May 2023. Many of the Graphiums seem attracted to anything bright blue or turquoise colored, even plastic junk...possibly because they can look bright turquoise blue in some lights:
Photo by Rob Jansen, Sabah, May 2024.
One of the distinctive features of Graphium procles is that the light-reflecting scales change slightly toward the forward edge of each wing; the hind wings shade from turquoise to white, the fore wings from turquoise to light leaf green.
Photo by Tlaloc27, Sabah, October 2019.
Good photos of this species are indeed something to brag about; this professional photographer has achieved three:
It's possible that so many photos of this Borneo native come from Sabah because Sabah has a butterfly park as a tourist attraction:
However, SK Kiew, who doesn't like having sample photos ganked from per Blogspot, has a splendid photo of Graphium procles sunning its wings, in Borneo, a little below the mid-point of this photo essay:
More typical photos of Graphium procles holding its wings straight above its back are at that link and also at this one:
If you enjoy looking at butterfly photos, you'll want to click on both of those links.
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