---
title: Spot-Head Blenny (Parablennius cyclops)
scientific_name: Parablennius cyclops
common_name: Spot-Head Blenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-19T11:04:53.700Z
updated: 2026-08-18T09:05:06.636Z
tags: Spot-Head Blenny, Parablennius cyclops, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/spot-head-blenny
---

# Spot-Head Blenny (*Parablennius cyclops*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** 6 cm
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow rock and reef, in holes
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- large protruding eyes set high on the head, moving separately
- dark spot on the head behind the eye
- mottled brown body, head out of a hole
- up to 6 cm

Watch the eyes. A blenny sitting in its hole swivels them independently, one scanning left while the other tracks something to the right, in the way a chameleon does and almost no other reef fish bothers with.

It is the correct solution for the life. The animal is committed to one hole and cannot afford to leave it to look around, and the two things it needs to watch are in opposite directions: food drifting past, and whatever is coming for it. Eyes mounted high on the head, bulging clear of the skull, and moving separately let it cover most of a hemisphere without moving its body at all. The cost is that the two fields overlap very little, so its depth perception is poor - which does not matter much to a fish that grazes rock at arm's length.

The eye is also why the animals look the way they do. The high blunt head that gives blennies their expression is a housing for eyes placed as high and as far apart as the skull allows.

This species lives here and nowhere else, on shallow rock, mottled brown with a dark mark behind the eye.

## Also known as

- **English:** Cyclops Blenny

## Scientific synonyms

- *Blennius cyclops* (Rüppell, 1830)
- *Blennius semifasciatus* Rüppell, 1830
- *Pictiblennius cyclops* (Rüppell, 1830)
- *Salarias cyclops* Rüppell, 1830

## Range

Eritrea, Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/spot-head-blenny)*
*Updated: August 18, 2026*