---
title: Crested Velvetfish (Ptarmus gallus)
scientific_name: Ptarmus gallus
common_name: Crested Velvetfish
taxon: Velvetfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-29T09:35:36.014Z
updated: 2026-08-20T16:17:04.053Z
tags: Crested Velvetfish, Ptarmus gallus, Velvetfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/velvetfishes/crested-velvetfish
---

# Crested Velvetfish (*Ptarmus gallus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Velvetfishes (*Aploactinidae*)
- **Size:** up to 10 cm
- **Depth:** 2-30 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Silty rubble and weedy bottom beside reef
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- leaf-shaped body, flattened side to side, with a tall crest over the head
- velvety skin with no visible scales
- rocks slowly back and forth in the surge like a drifting leaf
- length up to 10 cm

A fish shaped like a dead leaf, with skin like velvet and a crest rising over its head, rocking gently on silty bottom. Almost nobody finds one, and the ones who do are usually looking for something else.

The skin is the name. Velvetfishes have no scales; the surface is covered in tiny prickles that give it a matte, dusty texture, and things settle on it - silt, algae, diatoms - so an old fish is genuinely overgrown and looks like debris rather than an animal.

The act is completed by the movement. Rather than holding still, it sways with the surge at the rhythm of the water around it, which is exactly what a waterlogged leaf does, and predators looking for the stillness that gives away a hiding fish find motion instead.

It eats small crustaceans, taken with a quick gulp from a fish that otherwise barely moves. Muck sites and silty rubble slopes are where to look, at night, slowly, and mostly in vain.

## Also known as

- **English:** Crested Velvetfish, cock scorpionfish
- **Czech:** sametovec rudomořský
- **Russian:** Петушиная птарма

## Scientific synonyms

- *Tetraroge gallus* Kossmann & Räuber, 1877

## Range

East Africa

---

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