---
title: Rusty Parrotfish (Scarus ferrugineus)
scientific_name: Scarus ferrugineus
common_name: Rusty Parrotfish
taxon: Parrotfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-24T13:47:14.086Z
updated: 2026-08-13T20:46:03.282Z
tags: Rusty Parrotfish, Scarus ferrugineus, Parrotfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/rusty-parrotfish
---

# Rusty Parrotfish (*Scarus ferrugineus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Parrotfishes (*Scaridae*)
- **Size:** up to 41 cm
- **Depth:** 1-60 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral reef and rubble, grazing all day
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- males green-blue with pink-orange cheek and fin margins
- females and young dull rust-brown, plainer
- parrot beak of fused teeth, visible scrape marks left on coral
- length up to 41 cm

The parrotfish a diver here sees most, and the one doing most of the work on the reef. Males are green-blue with pink-orange trim, females and young a dull rust-brown, and the two were long taken for different species.

It eats rock. The beak is a set of fused teeth backed by heavy jaw muscle, and the fish bites algae and its substrate together, grinding the mouthful in a mill of throat plates and passing the mineral part out as sand. Follow one for a few minutes and it will do this several times, and the trail of white clouds behind a feeding school is beach in production.

At night it does something stranger. The fish wedges into a crevice and secretes a transparent cocoon of mucus around itself, sealed except for openings that let water through. The cocoon masks its scent from night hunters and blocks parasites; building it takes half an hour, and the fish abandons it at dawn.

Like other parrotfish it starts female and can turn male, and the brightest fish on the reef is a fish that used to be a plain brown one.

## Also known as

- **English:** rusty parrotfish
- **Arabic:** Ghabban
- **Hebrew:** תוכינון חלוד
- **French:** Perroquet Ronille
- **Italian:** pesce pappagallo rugginoso
- **German:** Rostnacken-Papageifisch
- **Spanish:** Loro Orín, Loro oxidado
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-papagaio-ferrugem
- **Dutch:** Roestnekpapagaaivis
- **Czech:** ploskozubec černohlavý
- **Russian:** Ржавый скар
- **CA:** Peix lloro d'Àqaba

## Scientific synonyms

- *Pseudoscarus augustinus* Kossmann & Räuber, 1877
- *Scarus aeruginosus* Valenciennes, 1840
- *Scarus caerulescens* Valenciennes, 1840
- *Scarus coerulescens* Valenciennes, 1840
- *Scarus marshalli* Schultz, 1958

## Range

Djibouti, Federal Republic of Somalia, Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/rusty-parrotfish)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*