---
title: Giant Frogfish (Antennarius commerson)
scientific_name: Antennarius commerson
common_name: Giant Frogfish
taxon: Frogfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-16T15:56:05.553Z
updated: 2026-08-12T08:14:14.881Z
tags: Giant Frogfish, Antennarius commerson, Frogfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/frogfishes/giant-frogfish
---

# Giant Frogfish (*Antennarius commerson*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Frogfishes (*Antennariidae*)
- **Size:** up to 40 cm
- **Depth:** 1-45 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Reef and rubble, sitting still on sponges and hard bottom
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- lumpy stalked body sitting on arm-like pectoral fins, not swimming
- a fishing rod folded back between the eyes, tipped with a wormlike lure
- texture and color match whatever it is sitting on, including sponges
- length up to 40 cm

A lump of sponge with a mouth: up to 40 cm (16 in) of loose warty skin over a globe of a body, propped on thick pectoral fins that work as arms rather than fins. It does not swim if it can help it, and it does not run away, which is why divers walk past it and photographers who know what to look for do not.

It fishes. The first dorsal spine has been rebuilt into a rod carried folded back between the eyes, tipped with a fleshy lure that the fish waves in front of its own mouth in the exact rhythm of a swimming worm. Small fish come to eat it, and the lure keeps twitching until they are close enough.

The strike is the fastest feeding movement measured in any fish. The mouth expands to twelve times its resting volume in about six milliseconds and the prey is pulled in with the inrush of water before it can register the movement. The stomach then stretches to hold animals as large as the frogfish itself.

Color is not fixed. Over weeks an individual can shift between yellow, black, red and mottled cream to match the sponge it has chosen, and the skin grows filaments and lumps to complete the disguise. Two frogfish sitting a meter apart on different sponges can look like two different species.

## Also known as

- **English:** Giant Frogfish, Black Angler, Commerson's Frogfish
- **Japanese:** オオモンカエルアンコウ
- **TAH:** nohu

## Scientific synonyms

- *Antennarius bivertex* Commerson, 1798
- *Antennarius caudimaculatus* (Rüppell, 1838)
- *Antennarius commerson* (Latreille, 1804)
- *Antennarius commersoni* (Latreille, 1804)
- *Antennarius commersonii* (Cuvier, 1817)
- *Antennarius goramensis* Bleeker, 1864
- *Antennarius lateralis* Tanaka, 1917
- *Antennarius lutescens* Seale, 1906
- *Antennarius moluccensis* Bleeker, 1855
- *Antennarius rubrofuscus* (Garrett, 1863)
- *Chironectes caudimaculatus* Rüppell, 1838
- *Chironectes commersonii* Cuvier, 1817
- *Chironectes rubrofuscus* Garrett, 1863
- *Lophie commerson* Lacepède, 1798
- *Lophiocharon goramensis* (Bleeker, 1864)
- *Lophius commerson* Latreille, 1804
- *Lophius commersonii* Shaw, 1804

## Range

Seychelles, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/frogfishes/giant-frogfish)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*