---
title: Camel Cowfish (Tetrosomus gibbosus)
scientific_name: Tetrosomus gibbosus
common_name: Camel Cowfish
taxon: Boxfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-07-04T21:28:29.103Z
updated: 2026-08-20T14:28:43.571Z
tags: Camel Cowfish, Tetrosomus gibbosus, Boxfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/boxfishes/camel-cowfish
---

# Camel Cowfish (*Tetrosomus gibbosus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Boxfishes (*Ostraciidae*)
- **Size:** up to 30 cm
- **Depth:** 2-110 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Seagrass, silty sand and rubble away from coral
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Poisonous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- triangular in cross section, with a sharp keel along the back
- tall spine or hump rising from the keel, especially in juveniles
- pale yellow-brown with fine blue-white spots
- sculls with tiny fins, hovering rather than swimming
- length up to 30 cm

A fish built as a triangular box with a hump on the ridge, sculling slowly over seagrass with fins that look far too small for it. Every part of the shape is a compromise the animal made in exchange for armor.

The body is a rigid case of fused bony plates. Nothing bends, so it cannot flex its way through the water and instead drives itself with the fins alone, hovering and pivoting like a small machine. That makes it slow, obvious and easy to approach, and it can afford to be, because a predator that bites one gets a mouthful of bone and a mouthful of poison.

Under stress it releases ostracitoxin from the skin, a soap-like poison that destroys the gills of other fish in a confined volume. In the sea it is diluted to nothing. In a bucket or a tank it kills everything present, including the cowfish.

It has also traveled. This is one of the Lessepsian migrants that went north through Suez, and it is now recorded across the eastern Mediterranean - an armored, poisonous, slow-moving box quietly extending its range through a canal.

Regional guides print it as the humpback turretfish, which describes it better than cowfish does: the spine on the ridge is the feature, and there are no horns on the head at all.

## Also known as

- **English:** humpback turret, blackclotched turretfish, Humpback turretfish, thornback trunkfish
- **Arabic:** Sandooq Al Bahar, Samak Yunis
- **Hebrew:** שיריונון משולש
- **French:** Coffre Bossu
- **Spanish:** Cofre Jorobado
- **Japanese:** ラクダハコフグ, Rakudahakofugu
- **Russian:** Горбатый кузовок

## Scientific synonyms

- *Ostracion gibbosus* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Ostracion turritus* Forsskål, 1775
- *Rhinesomus gibbosus* (Linnaeus, 1758)
- *Tertrosomus gibbosus* (Linnaeus, 1758)
- *Tetrasoma gibbosus* (Linnaeus, 1758)
- *Tetrasomus gibbosus* (Linnaeus, 1758)
- *Tetrosomus gibosus* (Linnaeus, 1758)

## Range

Indian Ocean, Madagascar, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/boxfishes/camel-cowfish)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*