---
title: Spot-fin Porcupinefish (Diodon hystrix)
scientific_name: Diodon hystrix
common_name: Spot-fin Porcupinefish
taxon: Porcupinefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-01-08T21:45:54.129Z
updated: 2026-08-17T17:42:33.376Z
tags: Spot-fin Porcupinefish, Diodon hystrix, Porcupinefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/porcupinefishes/spot-fin-porcupinefish
---

# Spot-fin Porcupinefish (*Diodon hystrix*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Porcupinefishes (*Diodontidae*)
- **Size:** up to 91 cm
- **Weight:** 2.8 Kg
- **Depth:** 2-50 m
- **Diet:** Durophage
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Caves and ledges by day, sand and rubble at night
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Poisonous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- heavy tan body covered in small black spots, including on the fins
- long spines lying flat along the body until the fish inflates
- large protruding eyes with a green-gold iris, and a beak of fused teeth
- length up to 91 cm

A heavy tan fish to 91 cm (3 ft), spotted black over the body and the fins, with big green-gold eyes and spines lying flat along the skin. At rest it looks like a lumpy pufferfish; the spines only become obvious when they stand up, and they only stand up when the fish inflates.

Inflation is a one-trick defense with real costs. Water is pumped into an elastic stomach chamber until the body is a rigid ball two or three times its normal diameter, locking the spines outward; the fish cannot swim while inflated, takes minutes to recover afterward, and is exhausted by it. It is a last resort rather than a display, and lifting one out of the water to make it puff for a photograph can kill it.

The jaw is the other half of the animal. Four teeth fused into a solid beak crush urchins, hermit crabs and molluscs, and the bite is strong enough to take a finger from a careless fisherman handling one.

Like other porcupinefishes it carries tetrodotoxin in the skin, liver and gonads, accumulated from bacteria in its food. Nothing eats an adult, and nothing should.

## Also known as

- **English:** porcupinefish, Spotted Percupine Fish, spot-fin porcupinefish
- **French:** Grand Porc-épic, Poisson porc-épic, Porc-épic Boubou
- **Spanish:** pez erizo pecoso, Pez Erizo Del Punteado, Pejerizo Común
- **Portuguese:** Baiacu-de-espinho
- **Japanese:** ネズミフグ, Nezumifugu
- **Russian:** Длинношипая рыба-ёж
- **TAH:** totara

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chilomycterus hystrix* (Linnaeus, 1758)
- *Diodon armillatus* Whitley, 1933
- *Diodon brachiatus* Bloch & Schneider, 1801
- *Diodon histrix* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Diodon hystrax* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Diodon hystris* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Diodon hystrix hystrix* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Diodon maculostriatus* Tuomey, 1848
- *Diodon nudifrons* Jenkins, 1903
- *Diodon punctatus* Cuvier, 1818
- *Diodon spinosissimus* Cuvier, 1818
- *Diodon totara* Curtiss, 1938
- *Paradiodon hystrix* (Linnaeus, 1758)

## Range

Benin, Federal Republic of Somalia, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mozambique, New Zealand, North Atlantic Ocean, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/porcupinefishes/spot-fin-porcupinefish)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*