---
title: Bridled Parrotfish (Scarus frenatus)
scientific_name: Scarus frenatus
common_name: Bridled Parrotfish
taxon: Parrotfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-15T13:49:01.563Z
updated: 2026-08-20T22:56:49.682Z
tags: Bridled Parrotfish, Scarus frenatus, Parrotfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/bridled-parrotfish
---

# Bridled Parrotfish (*Scarus frenatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Parrotfishes (*Scaridae*)
- **Size:** 47 cm
- **Depth:** 1-25 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Exposed reef fronts and coral-rich slopes
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- males dark green with a fine lavender vermiculate pattern on the head and forebody
- females with pinkish-red dorsal, anal and pelvic fins
- dark bridle-like line across the cheek in initial-phase fish
- up to 47 cm

At dusk this fish wraps itself in a sleeping bag it makes out of its own mucus.

Glands behind the gill covers produce a transparent envelope that takes about half an hour to build and completely encloses the animal, open at each end for water to pass. The fish sleeps inside it, wedged in a crevice, and abandons it at dawn.

What it is for took a long time to establish, and the best-supported answer is smell. Moray eels hunt at night largely by scent, and a parrotfish inside a cocoon does not leak its own into the water. Fish removed from their cocoons in experiments were found by eels far more often than fish left in them. The envelope may also carry some defense against parasites, which cannot get through it.

So the animal that spends its day as the loudest thing on the reef, biting rock in the open, spends its night sealed in a bag of slime and undetectable.

The males are the dark green ones with a fine lavender scribble across the head; females carry pinkish-red fins and a dark line across the cheek that gives the species its name.

## Also known as

- **English:** bridled parrotfish, Six-banded Parrot-fish, Six-banded Parrotfish
- **Hebrew:** תוכינון אדום-סנפיר
- **French:** Perroquet à six bandes, Perroquet bridé
- **Italian:** pesce pappagallo dalle briglie
- **German:** Grünbürzel-Papageifisch
- **Spanish:** Loro de Seis Bandas
- **Portuguese:** Papagaio de Seis Linhas, Peixe-papagaio-de-bico-afiado
- **Czech:** ploskozubec uzdičkový
- **Japanese:** アミメブダイ, Amimebudai
- **Chinese:** 網紋鸚哥魚, 網紋鸚嘴魚, 网纹鹦嘴鱼
- **Russian:** Шестиполосый скар
- **CA:** Peix lloro de cua blava
- **FIJ:** soqo
- **MSA:** Kalat, Ketarap, Perencong
- **TGL:** Isdang loro, Yapot
- **TH:** ปลานกแก้วเกล็ดด่าง

## Scientific synonyms

- *Callyodon frenatus* (Lacepède, 1802)
- *Callyodon sexvittatus* (Rüppell, 1835)
- *Callyodon upolensis* Jordan & Seale, 1906
- *Callyodon vermiculatus* Fowler & Bean, 1928
- *Scarus randalli* Schultz, 1958
- *Scarus sexvittatus* Rüppell, 1835
- *Scarus vermiculatus* (Fowler & Bean, 1928)

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/bridled-parrotfish)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*