---
title: Largespotted Snakemoray (Uropterygius polyspilus)
scientific_name: Uropterygius polyspilus
common_name: Largespotted Snakemoray
taxon: Moray eel
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-25T18:49:30.684Z
updated: 2026-08-17T22:43:33.918Z
tags: Largespotted Snakemoray, Uropterygius polyspilus, Moray eel, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/largespotted-snakemoray
---

# Largespotted Snakemoray (*Uropterygius polyspilus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Moray eel (*Muraenidae*)
- **Size:** 80 cm
- **Depth:** 1-18 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Rubble and reef, shallow
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- pale brown with large, well-separated dark blotches
- blotches larger and fewer than in the other snakemorays here
- round body, almost finless, blunt tail
- up to 78 cm

Its name means many-spotted, and the spots are all anyone has to go on.

The burrowing morays are a taxonomist's problem. They have no fins to count rays on, no scales to count rows of, no distinctive body shape - they are all brown ropes - and the characters that actually separate them are things like the arrangement of sensory pores on the head, the number and placement of teeth, and the count of vertebrae, none of which can be seen on a living animal or a photograph. What is left for anyone working underwater is the pattern, which varies with age and with the individual.

So the group has been split, merged, renamed and split again, and a fair number of the species in it are known from a handful of preserved specimens. Any identification of a snakemoray from a photograph should be read as a best guess.

This one is at the readable end: pale brown under large, well-spaced dark blotches, distinctly bigger and fewer than in its relatives, up to seventy-eight centimeters, in shallow rubble.

## Also known as

- **English:** Large-spotted Snake Moray, Manyspotted Snake Moray
- **French:** Murène-serpent tachetée
- **TAH:** puhi

## Scientific synonyms

- *Gymnomuraena polyspila* Regan, 1909
- *Uropteryginus polyspilus* (Regan, 1909)
- *Uropterygius polispilus* (Regan, 1909)

## Range

Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, Tanzania

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/moray-eel/largespotted-snakemoray)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*