Saddle butterflyfish
Amazing fact
The saddle butterflyfish has blue lines along the lower sides of its body.
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
The saddle butterflyfish has blue lines along the lower sides of its body.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Saddle butterflyfish
- Scientific name
- Chaetodon ephippium
- Japanese name
- セグロチョウチョウウオ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Order
- Chaetodontiformes
- Family
- Chaetodontidae
- Genus
- Chaetodon
A fish found from Hachijojima, the Ogasawara Islands and the Ryukyu Islands to Taiwan and the eastern Indian and Pacific Oceans.
How the Saddle butterflyfish lives
It lives in lagoons and seaward reefs where corals grow abundantly. It eats coral polyps, algae, sponges, fish eggs and small animals on the seabed.
Museums Victoria新潟市水族館 マリンピア日本海Basic data
- Range
- Ogasawara Islands, Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, eastern Indian Ocean to Pacific, and elsewhere
Where the Saddle butterflyfish has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- セグロチョウチョウウオ
- 简体中文
- 鞍斑蝴蝶鱼
- 繁體中文
- 鞍斑蝴蝶魚
- Español
- Pez Mariposa
- Français
- Poisson-papillon à selle noire
- Deutsch
- Sattelfleck-Falterfisch
- Português (Brasil)
- Peixe-borboleta-de-sela-preta
- Italiano
- Pesce farfalla sellato
- العربية
- سمكة الفراشة ذات السرج
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Kepe-kepe angsa
- Русский
- Черноспинная рыба-бабочка
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — セグロチョウチョウウオChecked: 2026-11-04
- 新潟市水族館 マリンピア日本海 — セグロチョウチョウウオChecked: 2026-11-07
- Museums Victoria — Saddle Butterflyfish, Chaetodon ephippium Cuvier 1831Checked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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