---
title: Butterflyfishes (Chaetodontidae)
scientific_name: Chaetodontidae
common_name: Butterflyfishes
rank: Family
published: 2024-11-19T18:41:51.573Z
updated: 2026-08-23T21:43:02.830Z
tags: Butterflyfishes, Chaetodontidae, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes
---

# Butterflyfishes (*Chaetodontidae*)

## Quick facts

- **Rank:** Family
- **Scientific name:** Chaetodontidae
- **Body shape:** Disc - Round and flat as a plate, seen from the side - butterflyfishes, angelfishes.
- **Species listed here:** 15

## How to recognise this group

- deep, laterally compressed body
- small, brush-like mouth
- distinctive contrasting colour patterns

Much of this family eats coral, and eats it one polyp at a time. The snout ends in a brush of fine teeth, which is what the family name means, and the fish picks individual polyps out of the surface of a living colony or clips the crowns off tube worms, taking a fraction of a meal from a hundred colonies in a morning and killing none of them. It is the opposite of how anything else on the reef feeds.

Some species can switch to other food. Several cannot, and that turns them into an instrument. An obligate coral feeder has no fallback, so when the coral dies the fish goes even though the reef still looks like a reef: the skeleton stands, the shape is unchanged, and the butterflyfish are simply not there anymore. Survey teams count them for exactly that reason. The number drops before the structure does, and after a bleaching event the coral eaters thin out first while the generalists stay put.

They go in twos. A butterflyfish pair is not a courtship that ends; it can hold for years, and the two feed within a body length of each other, work the same ground day after day and search when they are separated. For an animal whose food is scattered in small fixed amounts across a territory, two fish that know every colony on it and can drive off an intruder together are worth more than either alone.

The family they get confused with is the angelfishes, and one mark settles it: an angelfish carries a spine at the lower corner of the cheek and a butterflyfish does not. Fifteen species are listed here and several of them, including the two you will see most, live here and nowhere else. Their young are worth a footnote: the larva swims in a case of bony plates over the head and shoulders, armor that no adult has and that it sheds when it settles onto a reef.


## Species (15)

- [Arabian Butterflyfish (Chaetodon melapterus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/arabian-butterflyfish)
- [Blackback Butterflyfish (Chaetodon melannotus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/blackback-butterflyfish)
- [Bluecheek Butterflyfish (Chaetodon semilarvatus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/bluecheek-butterflyfish)
- [Chevron Butterflyfish (Chaetodon trifascialis)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/chevron-butterflyfish)
- [Crown Butterflyfish (Chaetodon paucifasciatus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/crown-butterflyfish)
- [Diagonal Butterflyfish (Chaetodon fasciatus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/diagonal-butterflyfish)
- [Exquisite Butterflyfish (Chaetodon austriacus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/exquisite-butterflyfish)
- [Lined Butterflyfish (Chaetodon lineolatus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/lined-butterflyfish)
- [Orangeface Butterflyfish (Chaetodon larvatus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/orangeface-butterflyfish)
- [Paleface Butterflyfish (Chaetodon mesoleucos)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/paleface-butterflyfish)
- [Red Sea Bannerfish (Heniochus intermedius)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/red-sea-bannerfish)
- [Schooling Bannerfish (Heniochus diphreutes)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/schooling-bannerfish)
- [Somali Butterflyfish (Chaetodon leucopleura)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/somali-butterflyfish)
- [Threadfin Butterflyfish (Chaetodon auriga)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/threadfin-butterflyfish)
- [Yellow Longnose Butterflyfish (Forcipiger flavissimus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/yellow-longnose-butterflyfish)

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*