---
title: Lance Blenny (Aspidontus dussumieri)
scientific_name: Aspidontus dussumieri
common_name: Lance Blenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-29T23:29:15.059Z
updated: 2026-08-17T11:06:47.651Z
tags: Lance Blenny, Aspidontus dussumieri, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/lance-blenny
---

# Lance Blenny (*Aspidontus dussumieri*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** 11.5 cm
- **Depth:** 1-20 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral and rock, in abandoned worm tubes and holes
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- long slender body, blue-gray with a dark stripe from snout to tail
- backs into an empty worm tube and watches from the entrance
- elongated jaws with a pair of large curved canines in the lower jaw
- swims with a whole-body undulation rather than with the pectoral fins
- up to 12 cm

It lives in a tube it did not build. Blennies of this group take over the abandoned limestone tubes of tube worms, and similar narrow holes in the reef, back into them tail first, and spend the day with only the head showing at the opening. Approach and the fish is gone; back off and wait half a minute and the head is at the same hole again.

Going in backwards takes a particular body: long, round in section, flexible along its whole length. That is why this fish looks nothing like the stubby blennies that perch on top of coral heads. It swims differently too, undulating the whole body like a small eel instead of rowing with its pectoral fins.

Despite the pair of large curved canines in the lower jaw that the genus is named for - Aspidontus, shield tooth - it is mostly a grazer, taking algae, detritus and small invertebrates off rock.

It is a near twin of the false cleanerfish, its own congener, but longer and plainer. That one runs a confidence trick on other fish for a living. This one does not.

## Also known as

- **English:** lance blenny, Slender Sabretooth Blenny, Dussumier's Blenny
- **French:** Blennie de Dussumier
- **German:** Dussumiers Säbelzähner
- **Spanish:** Blenio Lanceta
- **Portuguese:** Falso-limpador-de-Dussumier
- **Czech:** slizoun Dussumierův
- **Japanese:** クロスジギンポ, Kurosujigimpo
- **Chinese:** 杜氏盾齒鳚, 狗鰷
- **Russian:** Ланцетовидный аспидонт

## Scientific synonyms

- *Aspidontus dussumeiri* (Valenciennes, 1836)
- *Aspidontus fluctuans* (Weber, 1909)
- *Aspidontus gorrorensis* (Herre, 1936)
- *Aspidontus wamiziensis* Smith, 1959
- *Blennechis dussumieri* Valenciennes, 1836
- *Petroscirtes fluctuans* Weber, 1909
- *Petroscirtes gorrorensis* Herre, 1936

## Range

Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/lance-blenny)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*