The Common Castor (Ariadne merione) is an orange coloured butterfly with 30-35mm wingspan. Like other butterflies of Nymphalidae family they have small front feet which are unused. They are found in Indian Peninsula along with Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Upper side of this butterfly is reddish brown with black wavy lines on the body. In females, these wavy lines are broader in the form of distinct bands. The underside is often pale and duller in colour, and the black wavy lines are replaced by denser and suffuse brown bands.

They are fond of resting on leaves at the top canopy, keeping the wings slowly moving sideways and always nearer to host plants (Castor).

The larva is green having dark brown head with a pair of straight reddish brown spines and the body with dorsal longitudinal brown stripe and 4 rows of short branched spines in each segment.

Citations:

We photographed the Common Castor at Banergatta Butterfly Park. The reference was obtained from Wikipedia.