---
title: Red Sea Mimic Blenny (Ecsenius gravieri)
scientific_name: Ecsenius gravieri
common_name: Red Sea Mimic Blenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-29T23:34:42.380Z
updated: 2026-08-15T23:23:42.017Z
tags: Red Sea Mimic Blenny, Ecsenius gravieri, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/red-sea-mimic-blenny
---

# Red Sea Mimic Blenny (*Ecsenius gravieri*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** 8 cm
- **Depth:** 5-20 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral and rock in shallow water, perched in the open
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- front half of the body yellow, rear half blue-gray
- one black line running from the snout through the eye to the tail
- blunt rounded head with comb-like teeth
- perches on the bottom on its pelvic fins and moves in short hops, where the venomous fish it copies swims loosely in midwater and has a forked tail
- up to 8 cm

There is a fish in this sea with venom glands at the base of two long teeth in its lower jaw. When something swallows a blackline fangblenny, the blenny bites the inside of the predator's mouth, the venom goes in, and the predator gapes, shakes its head and spits it out alive. Fish that have done that once do not do it again, and what they remember is the pattern: yellow at the front, blue-gray at the back, one black line down the side.

This blenny copies that pattern exactly, and it has no venom whatsoever.

It is one of the cleanest examples of Batesian mimicry in the sea, a harmless animal wearing the warning colors of a dangerous one, and it works well enough that the mimic can sit out in the open on bare coral and graze algae and detritus while everything else its size stays in a hole. Both fish live in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and nowhere else on earth.

Telling them apart underwater comes down to movement. The fangblenny swims out in the water with a loose undulating motion and has a forked tail. The mimic perches, propped on its pelvic fins, and moves in short hops from one spot to the next.

## Also known as

- **English:** Red Sea mimic blenny
- **Hebrew:** קרנונית אילתית
- **French:** Blennie mimétique de mer Rouge
- **Italian:** Bavosa imitatrice del Mar Rosso
- **Czech:** slizoun Gravierův
- **Russian:** Красномрский эксен

## Scientific synonyms

- *Ecsenius klausewitzi* Lotan, 1970
- *Ecsenius klausewitzii* Lotan, 1970
- *Salarias gravieri* Pellegrin, 1906

## Range

Eritrea, Red Sea

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/red-sea-mimic-blenny)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*