---
title: Fivesaddle Parrotfish (Scarus scaber)
scientific_name: Scarus scaber
common_name: Fivesaddle Parrotfish
taxon: Parrotfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-15T13:49:01.563Z
updated: 2026-08-20T22:48:37.720Z
tags: Fivesaddle Parrotfish, Scarus scaber, Parrotfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/fivesaddle-parrotfish
---

# Fivesaddle Parrotfish (*Scarus scaber*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Parrotfishes (*Scaridae*)
- **Size:** 37 cm
- **Weight:** 900 g
- **Depth:** 1-20 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow coral reef and rubble
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- row of five pale saddles along the back in initial-phase fish
- dark cap over the top of the head, which the book names it for
- fused white beak, often chipped
- up to 37 cm

The beak is the family in one piece of anatomy. The teeth are not separate: they are fused into a pair of solid plates, upper and lower, forming a hard cutting edge that grows continuously from behind as the front wears away.

It has to. Biting rock destroys teeth, and a parrotfish takes tens of thousands of bites a day. A conventional set of teeth would be gone in a season. A beak that renews itself from the base is the only way to make a living from stone, and the enamel-like material at its tip is among the stiffest biological substances measured in any animal.

The scars are how you read a reef. Look at any large coral head here and you will find pale oval bite marks in rows across it, each one a mouthful. They heal over months, and on a reef with a healthy parrotfish population they are everywhere.

This species is a smaller shallow-water parrotfish with a row of five pale saddles along the back and a dark cap over the head, which is what the regional guide names it for: dusky-cap.

## Also known as

- **English:** five-saddle parrotfish, Dusky-capped Parrotfish, Fivesaddle parrotfish
- **French:** Perroquet à cinq selles, Kakatoi Vert, Perroquet Sale
- **Italian:** Pesce pappagallo a cinque selle
- **German:** Fünfsattel-Papageifisch
- **Portuguese:** Papagaio de Cinco Selas, Peixe-papagaio-das-Mascarenhas
- **Czech:** ploskozubec čepičkatý
- **Chinese:** 横带鹦嘴鱼
- **CA:** Peix lloro de les Illes Mascarenyes
- **TH:** ปลานกแก้วบั้งทแยง

## Scientific synonyms

- *Callyodon pectoralis* (Valenciennes, 1840)
- *Callyodon scaber* (Valenciennes, 1840)
- *Scarus pectoralis* Valenciennes, 1840

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mozambique, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa

---

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