Nearly all are large, strong animals with black body and wings, often with a bronze-green or deep blue lustre, often spotted red on the head and abdomen.

The Pyrrhopyge, according to statements by Adalbert Seitz, are conspicuous animals owing to their almost invariably one-coloured black colouring and the mostly glaring-red ends of their bodies.

When they fly past swiftly, these red places are difficult to notice for the human eye, but the resting insect makes the impression as if its body were bleeding in front and behind.

In the waiting attitude taken up by the Pyrrhopyge on the tip of the twig, the forewings are half erected, the hindwings somewhat more lowered; a position sometimes met with in European Adopaea or Pamphila, whereas other Pyrrhopyginae, such as the blue-striped Jemadia, the Mimoniades, Myscelus etc.

The Jemadia and Mimoniades love the umbels of blossoming bushes, where they are met with in the company of similarly coloured hesperids from other groups, such as Phocides and Pyrrhopygopsis.