---
title: Cigar Wrasse (Cheilio inermis)
scientific_name: Cheilio inermis
common_name: Cigar Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
published: 2024-01-01T17:21:34.209Z
updated: 2026-08-19T11:13:12.550Z
tags: Cigar Wrasse, Cheilio inermis, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/cigar-wrasse
---

# Cigar Wrasse (*Cheilio inermis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** up to 50 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Seagrass beds and weedy shallows
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- extremely elongated cigar-shaped body with a pointed snout
- color from brown-green to bright yellow, changeable
- hangs motionless among seagrass blades, aligned with them
- length up to 50 cm

It stopped looking like a wrasse. Wrasses are deep-bodied fish that row along with their pectoral fins, and this one is half a meter of cylinder with the head drawn out to a point - a shape that costs it the family's maneuverability and buys the ability to lie among seagrass blades at their exact angle and read as one of them.

The color is adjustable on top of that. The same individual can be brown, olive, mottled or bright yellow, shifting to match the bed it is sitting in, and a yellow fish in yellowing grass is invisible until it moves.

It hunts small crustaceans, molluscs and fish with a quick strike from a body that was, a second earlier, doing nothing at all.

Look in seagrass rather than on coral. Large individuals in some regions carry ciguatoxins, so the flag on this card is about eating it, not about meeting it.

## Also known as

- **English:** cigar wrasse, Sharp-nosed rainbowfish
- **French:** Labre cigare, Longue girelle, Pêche madame
- **Spanish:** Julia larguirucha
- **Portuguese:** Madonoli
- **Japanese:** カマスベラ, Kamasubera
- **Chinese:** 管唇魚
- **Russian:** Длинный губан
- **TAH:** po'ou 'ava'ava

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cheilinus inermis* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Cheilio auratus* Lacepède, 1802
- *Cheilio bicolor* Bianconi, 1857
- *Cheilio cyanochloris* Valenciennes, 1839
- *Cheilio cyano-chloris* Valenciennes, 1839
- *Cheilio enermis* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Cheilio forskalii* Valenciennes, 1839
- *Cheilio fuscus* Lacepède, 1802
- *Cheilio hemichrysos* Valenciennes, 1839
- *Cheilio innermis* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Cheilio microstoma* Valenciennes, 1839
- *Cheilio ramosus* Jenyns, 1842
- *Cheilio udanad* Montrouzier, 1857
- *Cheilio viridis* Valenciennes, 1839
- *Cheillio inermis* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Cheilo inermis* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Chelio inermis* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Labrus fusiformis* Rüppell, 1835
- *Labrus hassek* Lacepède, 1801
- *Labrus inermis* Forsskål, 1775

## Range

Djibouti, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/cigar-wrasse)*
*Updated: August 19, 2026*