Common Leopard

The common leopard is a medium-sized butterfly with a wingspan of 50–55 mm with a tawny colour and marked with black spots. The underside of the butterfly is more glossy than the upper and both the male and female are similar looking. A more prominent purple gloss on the underside is found in the dry-season form of this butterfly.

Male aud female. Upperside bright yellowish-ochreous. Forewing with two black short slender sinuous bars across middle of the cell, a similar darker pair at its end, followed beyond by a short broad sinuous streak from the costa to the lower radial, and is then succeeded below the cell by an inwardly-oblique series of four irregular-shaped spots, and beyond by a medial-discal transverse row of similarly disposed narrow spots, an outer-discal row of round spots, then an inner submarginal sinuous line, confluent with an outer straight line, and a marginal row of triangular spots. …

The butterfly is found in Subsaharan Africa and southern Asia (including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar) in a number of subspecies.

P. p. phalantha P. p. luzonica Fruhstofer (Philippines) P. p. columbina (Cramer) (southern China, Hainan and possibly Taiwan) P. p. araca (Waterhouse & Lyell, 1914) (Australia) P. p. aethiopica (Rothschild & Jordan, 1903) (Madagascar, Seychelles, Aldabra, Comoro, Tropical Africa) P. p. granti (Rothschild & Jordan, 1903) (Socotra Island) Torben Larsen developed a species numbering system for his 2005 publication Butterflies of West Africa. The subspecies aethiopica is #1200. The 'Larsen' numbers have since been used with permission in A Sharp Eye on Butterflies of Ghana.