---
title: Yellow Longnose Butterflyfish (Forcipiger flavissimus)
scientific_name: Forcipiger flavissimus
common_name: Yellow Longnose Butterflyfish
taxon: Butterflyfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T09:25:09.347Z
updated: 2026-08-29T00:42:03.756Z
tags: Yellow Longnose Butterflyfish, Forcipiger flavissimus, Butterflyfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/yellow-longnose-butterflyfish
---

# Yellow Longnose Butterflyfish (*Forcipiger flavissimus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Butterflyfishes (*Chaetodontidae*)
- **Size:** up to 22 cm
- **Depth:** 1-145 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** steep coral slopes and drop-offs
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- long black tube snout with a small mouth at the tip
- bright yellow body, black triangle over the top of the head
- white lower head and chest
- black spot at the rear of the anal fin, near the tail
- up to 22 cm

The snout is a tool, and you can work out what it is for by what comes out of the hole. This fish pushes its long black tube into cracks too narrow for any other reef fish of its size and snips the tentacles off tube worms, the tube feet off sea urchins and starfish, and the tiny pincers that stud an urchin's skin. It crops the parts and leaves the animal alive to grow them back, and it also takes hydroids, small crustaceans and fish eggs on the way past.

The body is deep and bright yellow, the top of the head is a black triangle, the lower head and chest are white, and there is a black spot at the rear of the anal fin, close to the tail. That is the family's oldest trick laid out clearly: the real eye is buried in the dark head, and a false one sits at the wrong end of the fish, so a predator lines up on the tail and the fish leaves in the other direction.

In the Red Sea it is genuinely uncommon. The regional guide flags it as rare here and illustrates it with a picture taken elsewhere. Most divers who know this fish know it from the Indian or Pacific Ocean, and a sighting on an Egyptian reef is worth logging.

It is worth logging for another reason too. Few reef fishes have a range this wide: the Red Sea to Hawaii, and then across the open Pacific to Baja California and the Galapagos, a crossing almost no Indo-Pacific reef fish manages. Whatever its larvae do, they do it for a very long time.

Adults patrol steep coral slopes and drop-offs in pairs, usually shallow but recorded down to 145 m. There is a second long-snouted Forcipiger in the Indo-Pacific with an even longer jaw and fine dark spots on the chest, but it does not reach the Red Sea, so a yellow fish with a beak here is this one.

## Also known as

- **English:** forcepsfish, Yellow Long Nose Butterfly, Big long-nosed Butterflyfish
- **Hebrew:** פרפרף כתום
- **French:** Poisson pincette à long nez, Chelmon à long bec, Papillon longnez
- **Italian:** Pesce farfalla muso lungo, Pesce farfalla pinzetta, Pesce pinzetta comune
- **German:** Gelber Langnasen Pinzettfisch, Gelber Masken-Pinzettfisch
- **Spanish:** mariposa hocicona, Pez Mariposa Hocicona amarilla, Mariposa nariz larga
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-borboleta-de-focinho-comprido-do-Pacífico
- **Dutch:** Gele pincetvis
- **Swedish:** Amerikansk Näbbfisk
- **Polish:** Pensetnik czarnogłowy
- **Czech:** klipka žlutá
- **Japanese:** フエヤッコダイ, Fueyakkodai
- **Chinese:** 火箭蝶, 火箭蝶/黃火箭, 黃鑷口魚
- **Russian:** Жёлтая длиннорылая рыба-бабочка
- **CA:** Peix papallona nas d'agulla del Pacífic
- **DA:** Gul pincetfisk
- **FI:** Keltapinsettikala
- **FIJ:** daliga ragutu
- **HU:** Aranysárga csipeszhal
- **TAH:** paraha utu roa
- **TH:** ปลาผีเสื้อจมูกขาวเหลือง, ปลาผีเสื้อจมูกยาวขอบตาขาว, ปลาผีเสื้อปากยาวขอบตาขาว

## Scientific synonyms

- *Foreipiger flavissimus* Jordan & McGregor, 1898

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, New Zealand, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/yellow-longnose-butterflyfish)*
*Updated: August 29, 2026*