---
title: Fringed Toadfish (Barchatus cirrhosa)
scientific_name: Barchatus cirrhosa
common_name: Fringed Toadfish
taxon: Toadfishes
published: 2024-10-26T21:05:33.744Z
updated: 2026-08-17T18:26:22.001Z
tags: Fringed Toadfish, Barchatus cirrhosa, Toadfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/toadfishes/fringed-toadfish
---

# Fringed Toadfish (*Barchatus cirrhosa*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Toadfishes (*Batrachoididae*)
- **Size:** 35 cm
- **Depth:** 1-5 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Rocky crevices, rubble and sand in the top few meters
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Hazard:** Dangerous, Venomous
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea

## How to recognise it

- broad flattened head with a wide mouth and small high-set eyes
- skin fringes and flaps along the head and jaw
- mottled brown, green and gray, usually under a rock or half buried
- venomous spines in front of the dorsal fin
- up to 35 cm

Toadfish sing, and they do it with the fastest muscle in any animal with a backbone.

The swim bladder is wrapped in a pair of sonic muscles that contract and relax hundreds of times a second, faster than a hummingbird's wing, faster than a rattlesnake's rattle, faster than anything else measured in a vertebrate. Drumming them against the bladder produces a hum, a grunt or a long boat-whistle note, loud enough to carry through a hull and to be heard from a jetty. Males call from under rocks to bring females in to spawn, and where toadfish are common the sound is a nuisance to people trying to sleep on moored boats.

This one lives here and in the Gulf of Aden and nowhere else, in the top few meters, jammed under a rock or half buried, with skin fringes breaking up the outline of a head that is mostly mouth. It waits, and it takes whatever comes within a body length in one gulp.

The danger is entirely to hands and feet. There are venomous spines in front of the dorsal fin, and the fish is so well camouflaged and so shallow that the standard way to get stung is to put a hand down on one. Treat it like any fish sting: hot water, as hot as can be tolerated, and a doctor.

## Also known as

- **English:** Red Sea Toadfish

## Scientific synonyms

- *Barchatus cirrhosa* (Klunzinger, 1871)
- *Batrachus cirrhosus* Klunzinger, 1871
- *Thalassothia cirrhosa* (Klunzinger, 1871)
- *Thalassothia cirrhosus* (Klunzinger, 1871)

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/toadfishes/fringed-toadfish)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*