---
title: Mental Wrasse (Oxycheilinus mentalis)
scientific_name: Oxycheilinus mentalis
common_name: Mental Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T13:17:56.482Z
updated: 2026-08-20T14:44:44.780Z
tags: Mental Wrasse, Oxycheilinus mentalis, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/mental-wrasse
---

# Mental Wrasse (*Oxycheilinus mentalis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** up to 22 cm
- **Depth:** 2-20 m
- **Diet:** Piscivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral-rich reef and rubble
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- translucent fins blotched with red, unusually clear against the light
- reddish to olive body with a pointed snout
- juveniles patterned differently from adults
- up to 22 cm

Its fins are transparent, and that is a real advantage rather than a curiosity.

A fish's outline is what a predator finds first, and fins are the worst part of it: they stick out, they move, and they extend the silhouette well beyond the solid body. Making them clear removes that. A fish with translucent fins blotched only here and there with red reads as a smaller, more compact object than it is, and the parts that catch an eye are broken into disconnected patches instead of a continuous edge.

Lots of reef fish use versions of this. Clear fin margins are common, and the animals that take it furthest are the ambush hunters that need to close on prey without registering as a fish at all - which is what this one does, drifting up on small fish and crustaceans among coral.

It lives in this sea and the Gulf of Aden and nowhere else, up to twenty-two centimeters, with a pointed snout and a body that runs from reddish to olive depending on where it is sitting.

## Also known as

- **English:** Mental Wrasse
- **Arabic:** Muesy
- **Hebrew:** תפארן ארך ראש
- **German:** Schlanker Prachtlippfisch
- **Portuguese:** Bodião-mental
- **Czech:** pyskoun vznešený

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cheilinus mentalis* Rüppell, 1828

---

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