---
title: Clown Coris (Coris aygula)
scientific_name: Coris aygula
common_name: Clown Coris
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-01-01T20:18:09.338Z
updated: 2026-08-14T09:42:10.610Z
tags: Clown Coris, Coris aygula, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/clown-coris
---

# Clown Coris (*Coris aygula*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** up to 120 cm
- **Depth:** 2-30 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Reef flats and rubble slopes with open sand
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- adult males dark green-black with a pale band and a bulging forehead hump
- juveniles white with black blotches and two bright orange saddles
- large adults heavy-bodied and blunt-faced
- length up to 120 cm

The second largest wrasse in this sea after the Napoleon - a meter and twenty (4 ft) of dark green fish with a bulging forehead, cruising a rubble slope and turning stones over as it goes.

The juvenile is a different animal entirely: white with black blotches and two orange saddles, small, and moving in nervous darts. Divers photograph the young ones constantly and the adults rarely, and few connect the two.

Adults eat armored things - crabs, urchins, molluscs - and deal with them by force. A fish this size can pick up a sea urchin, carry it into open sand, and hammer it against the bottom until it breaks. Rocks are moved the same way, in the mouth, and the excavations are obvious once you know what made them.

It sleeps buried. Like other members of its genus it dives into sand at dusk and stays under until morning, which is also its escape response - a startled coris disappears into the bottom rather than swimming away.

## Also known as

- **English:** clown wrasse, Clown coris, False clownwrasse
- **Hebrew:** יולית ים-סופית
- **French:** Coris à points bleus, Girelle à tache orange, Clarisse clown
- **Italian:** Labride pagliaccio testa gobba, Labro pagliaccio testa gobba, Tordo pagliaccio testa gobba
- **German:** Spiegelfleck-Junker
- **Spanish:** Coris Napoleón de Manchas Rojas, Doncella circense
- **Portuguese:** Caralete circense, Bodião-corcunda
- **Dutch:** Oranjevleklipvis
- **Czech:** kněžík hranatý
- **Japanese:** カンムリベラ, Kammuribera, Kanmuribera
- **Chinese:** 柳冷仔, 白龍, 紅喉盔魚
- **Russian:** Корис-клоун
- **DA:** Dobbeltplettet gylte
- **FIJ:** koli ni wai
- **SW:** Pono
- **TAH:** po'ou pataitai
- **TGL:** Isdang bato, Bankilan, Bungat

## Scientific synonyms

- *Coris angulata* Lacepède, 1801
- *Coris angulatus* Lacepède, 1801
- *Coris cyanea* MacLeay, 1883
- *Coris imbris* Tanaka, 1918
- *Coris variegata* Ramsay & Ogilby, 1887
- *Hemicoris cingulum* (Lacepède, 1801)
- *Julis aygula* (Lacepède, 1801)
- *Julis cingulum* (Lacepède, 1801)
- *Julis coris* Valenciennes, 1839
- *Julis gibbifrons* Quoy & Gaimard, 1834
- *Julis ruppelii* Bennett, 1831
- *Julis semipunctatus* Rüppell, 1835
- *Labrus aureomaculatus* Bennett, 1830
- *Labrus cingulum* Lacepède, 1801

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Western Indian Ocean

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/clown-coris)*
*Updated: August 14, 2026*