Raccoon Butterflyfish Identification Guide

Key identification features

• Disc-shaped, laterally compressed body typical of butterflyfishes
• Yellow-orange overall body color
• Broad black band through the eye edged in white, resembling a raccoon's mask
• Dark saddle-shaped marking on the back just behind the head
• A distinct black bar near the base of the tail

Common look-alikes

• Threadfin butterflyfish has a similar eye mask but adds fine diagonal dark lines across the whole body and, as a juvenile, a trailing dorsal fin filament that the Raccoon Butterflyfish lacks.
• Other Chaetodon species with eye bands generally lack the combination of a back saddle plus a tail-base bar seen together on this species.
• Checking for both the saddle mark and the tail-base bar together is the most reliable way to separate it from similar butterflyfishes.

Where you'll see one

Raccoon Butterflyfish are common on coral and rocky reef flats and slopes across the Indo-Pacific and Hawaiian Islands, where they forage mostly after dusk on small invertebrates hidden in the reef.