---
title: Leopard Blenny (Exallias brevis)
scientific_name: Exallias brevis
common_name: Leopard Blenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-19T11:11:21.707Z
updated: 2026-08-16T06:41:11.953Z
tags: Leopard Blenny, Exallias brevis, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/leopard-blenny
---

# Leopard Blenny (*Exallias brevis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** 14.5 cm
- **Depth:** 3-20 m
- **Diet:** Corallivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef tops among branching corals, mostly 3 to 8 m
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- cream body under dense round spots - red in males, dark brown in females
- high blunt head with a fringe of cirri across the nape
- sits on branching coral, often beside a bare grazed patch
- up to 14.5 cm

A blenny that eats coral, and there are very few of those. It rasps the living tissue off branching corals with a mouth full of fine comb teeth, working Acropora, Pocillopora, Seriatopora, Porites and fire coral, and leaving pale grazed scars along the branches.

The male turns that damage into a nest. He picks a coral head and overgrazes one patch of it down to bare white skeleton, and the female lays on the cleared surface, where the eggs hold by an adhesive pad until they hatch. It makes the nest visible from several meters away: find a small bald patch on an otherwise healthy coral, and the fish is usually sitting within arm's reach of it.

The sexes are marked apart unusually clearly for a blenny. Both are cream and covered in dense round spots, but the male's spots are red and the female's are dark brown.

It is a shallow fish, mostly between 3 and 8 m on reef tops, and it depends completely on live coral. That is the problem with it: live branching coral is the first thing a hot summer takes away.

## Also known as

- **English:** leopard blenny, Spotted Coral Blenny, shortbodied blenny
- **Hebrew:** קישוטית האלמוגים
- **French:** Blennie léopard, Blennie-léopard
- **Italian:** Bavosa leopardo
- **German:** Leoparden-Schleimfisch
- **Spanish:** Blenio Pantera
- **Portuguese:** Blênio-leopardo
- **Dutch:** Luipaardkamtandslijmvis
- **Czech:** slizoun leopardí
- **Japanese:** セダカギンポ, Sedakagimpo
- **Chinese:** 短多鬚鳚
- **Russian:** Короткая экзаллия
- **MAH:** Jibalan
- **TAH:** 'o'opu

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cirripectes leopardus* (Day, 1870)
- *Exalia brevis* (Kner, 1868)
- *Exalias brevis* (Kner, 1868)
- *Salarias brevis* Kner, 1868
- *Salarias leopardus* Day, 1870

## Range

Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mozambique, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/leopard-blenny)*
*Updated: August 16, 2026*