Common Palmflies are common in open vegetation throughout the low lands, it is abundant in coconut plantations.
   They are more active in warm, sunny conditions, as they need to regulate their body temperature for flight.
   Early morning or late afternoon is usually the best time to find them when they are most active.
   The Common Palmfly feeds on various types of palms and can be found wherever the food plant is available. Often they may be quite abundant.
   Elymnias hypermnestra is dimorphic, meaning males and females do not look alike.
   Males exhibit black colored upperside forewings with small blue patches and reddish brown color on dorsal side hindwings, while the females mimic butterfly species of the genus Danaus.
   On the dorsal side, the butterfly is bluish black with a series of blue submarginal spots on the forewing. The dorsal side is a speckled brown with a lighter shade "thumb print" at the apex of the forewing. There is also a white spot at the costa of the hindwing.
   Termens of both wings are prominently scalloped. The hindwing is more strongly toothed at vein 4. Above, the wings are dark brown.
   On the forewing, there is a series of pale bluish submarginal spots, becoming larger in subapical area and then smaller again along the costal border. In the male, the subapical spots are closer to the apex than in the female.
   The hindwing is reddish brown with rather pale postdiscal spots. 
   On the ventral side, the wings are strongly mottled brown. At the apex of the forewing, there is a `thumb-print' (a triangular area in a lighter shade) of varying prominence among specimens.
   A white spot can be found in the centre of the costa on the hindwing, but this can be absent or inconspicuous in certain specimens.
   The Common Palmfly is the most widespread species of its genus in the Indo Australian region.
   Locally, it is also a rather common species with widespread occurrence across multiple habitats.                  Typically the adults are shade loving, and usually sighted flying along the edge of vegetated area and in the vicinity of a clump of palm trees.
   The adults have the habit of puddling and visiting flowers for mineral and energy intakes.
   The range of this insect is from Sri Lanka and India to Formosa and Indo China through Malaysia to the Lesser Sunda Islands and Philippines.