---
title: Houndfish (Tylosurus crocodilus)
scientific_name: Tylosurus crocodilus
common_name: Houndfish
taxon: Needlefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-06T12:14:25.458Z
updated: 2026-08-12T22:39:49.358Z
tags: Houndfish, Tylosurus crocodilus, Needlefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/needlefishes/houndfish
---

# Houndfish (*Tylosurus crocodilus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Needlefishes (*Belonidae*)
- **Size:** up to 1.5 m
- **Weight:** 4.5 - 6.35 Kg
- **Depth:** 0-15 m
- **Diet:** Piscivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Surface water over reef and lagoons, often at night around lights
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Dangerous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- long thin silver body with both jaws drawn out into a beak full of teeth
- dark blue-green back, keel on the tail stalk
- swims right at the surface, often as a shadow above a diver
- length up to 1.5 m

A meter and a half of silver muscle with both jaws drawn out into a toothed beak, lying at the surface. It is the largest needlefish in the sea, and everything about it is aimed forward.

It hunts by charging along the surface at small fish, and it can leave the water entirely to do it, skittering on the lower lobe of the tail before dropping back. That habit is fine until something gets in the way.

This is the fish that injures and occasionally kills people. Startled at night by a light or a boat, a needlefish accelerates in a straight line at the surface, and a hard beak on a one-meter fish moving at speed goes through soft tissue - fishermen and night divers around the tropics have been impaled through the chest, the neck and the eye. The rule is simple: keep torch beams pointed down at the surface at night, and do not stand up in a small boat waving one around.

By day the same animal is a shy silhouette hanging above the reef. It spawns by attaching eggs with fine sticky filaments to floating weed, which is why juveniles turn up in drifting rafts far from any coast.

## Also known as

- **English:** houndfish, Hound Needlefish
- **French:** Orphie de terre
- **Spanish:** agujón lisero
- **Greek:** Κροκοδιλοζαργάνα
- **Japanese:** オキザヨリ
- **Chinese:** 鳄形圆颌针鱼

## Scientific synonyms

- *Belona crocodila* Péron & Lesueur, 1821
- *Belone annulata* Valenciennes, 1846
- *Belone coromandelica* van Hasselt, 1823
- *Belone crassa* Poey, 1860
- *Belone crocodila* Péron & Lesueur, 1821
- *Belone crocodilus* Péron & Lesueur, 1821
- *Belone cylindrica* Bleeker, 1850
- *Belone gerania* Valenciennes, 1846
- *Belone gigantea* Temminck & Schlegel, 1846
- *Belone koseirensis* Klunzinger, 1871
- *Belone melanochira* Poey, 1860
- *Belone melanurus* Bleeker, 1849
- *Belone raphidoma* Ranzani, 1842
- *Belone timucoides* van Hasselt, 1824
- *Esox aaveri* Curtiss, 1938
- *Strongylura crocodila* (Péron & Lesueur, 1821)
- *Strongylura crocodilus* (Péron & Lesueur, 1821)
- *Strongylura gigantea* (Temminck & Schlegel, 1846)
- *Strongylura raphidoma* (Ranzani, 1842)
- *Strongylurus annulatus* (Valenciennes, 1846)
- *Strongylurus crocodila* (Péron & Lesueur, 1821)
- *Tylosurus annulatus* (Valenciennes, 1846)
- *Tylosurus crocodiles* (Péron & Lesueur, 1821)
- *Tylosurus crocodiles crocodiles* (Péron & Lesueur, 1821)
- *Tylosurus crocodilis* (Péron & Lesueur, 1821)

## Range

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

---

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