---
title: Red Cornetfish (Fistularia petimba)
scientific_name: Fistularia petimba
common_name: Red Cornetfish
taxon: Cornetfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-30T15:21:00.587Z
updated: 2026-08-23T19:48:43.266Z
tags: Red Cornetfish, Fistularia petimba, Cornetfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cornetfishes/red-cornetfish
---

# Red Cornetfish (*Fistularia petimba*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cornetfishes (*Fistulariidae*)
- **Size:** up to 2 m
- **Depth:** 10-200 m
- **Diet:** Piscivore
- **Activity:** Crepuscular
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Deeper sand and rubble bottom, below ten meters
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- orange-brown, with none of the blue spots the smooth cornetfish carries
- long whip-like filament trailing from the middle of the tail
- deeper than its relative, from about ten meters down
- up to 2 m

The whip trailing from its tail is not a decoration and not a rudder. It is a sense organ.

Both central rays of the tail are drawn out into a filament that can be a fifth of the animal's length, and the lateral line canal runs out into it. The lateral line is how a fish reads water: a chain of hair cells in a fluid-filled canal that detects pressure changes and flow, which is how fish hold formation in the dark and how a predator senses something moving nearby. Extending it behind the body gives this fish a trailing sensor in water it has already passed through, and in an animal this long and this thin, the far end is a long way from the head.

That matters because the whole design trades everything for length and thinness. A cornetfish is essentially a tube: seen head-on it disappears, which is how it gets close to prey, but it has almost no muscle and cannot turn quickly or accelerate.

This is the deeper of the two cornetfish here, orange-brown rather than gray-green, without the blue spots its relative carries, and usually below ten meters over sand and rubble.

## Also known as

- **English:** red cornetfish, Red Cornet Fish, Rough Flute Mouth
- **French:** Cornette rouge, Trompette
- **German:** Gestrifte tabakspfeife, Rauer Flötenfisch
- **Spanish:** corneta colorada, trompetero
- **Portuguese:** Corneta-rosada, Corneta-vermelho, Trombeta
- **Dutch:** Geriffelde fluitbek
- **Polish:** Fistulka czerwonawa
- **Czech:** lulanka štíhlá
- **Japanese:** アカヤガラ, Akayagara
- **Chinese:** 剃仔, 土管, 槍管
- **Russian:** Гладкая (тихоокеанская) свистулька, Гладкая свистулька
- **AF:** Buisbek
- **DA:** Rød tobakspibefisk
- **FI:** punakornettikala
- **MSA:** Jenjulung, Menyulong
- **TH:** ปลาปากขลุ่ยแดง, ปลาปากแตร, ปลาปากแตรเรียบ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Fistularia immaculata* Cuvier, 1816
- *Fistularia patimba* Lacepède, 1803
- *Fistularia rubra* Miranda Ribeiro, 1903
- *Fistularia serrata* Cuvier, 1816
- *Fistularia starksi* Jordan & Seale, 1905
- *Fistularia villosa* Klunzinger, 1871

## Range

Comoros, Djibouti, Federal Republic of Somalia, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, Mozambique, North Atlantic Ocean, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cornetfishes/red-cornetfish)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*