---
title: Candycane shrimp (Parhippolyte misticia)
scientific_name: Parhippolyte misticia
common_name: Candycane shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-30T13:18:51.108Z
updated: 2026-08-19T13:17:25.405Z
tags: Candycane shrimp, Parhippolyte misticia, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/candycane-shrimp
---

# Candycane shrimp (*Parhippolyte misticia*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 4 cm
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Caves, overhangs and deep crevices
- **Reproduction:** Brooder

## How to recognise it

- bold red and white banding along the body and legs
- long white antennae
- deep in caves by day, out on the reef at night
- up to 4 cm

Look into a cave with a torch and count how many of the animals in it are banded red and white. The shrimp, the squirrelfish, several of the crabs: the same two colors, over and over, in the same place.

It is not coincidence and it is not mimicry. Red is invisible below a few meters, so red pigment is a cheap way to be dark. White breaks the outline into pieces. Put them in bands and you get an animal that, in the dim blue light of a cave mouth, reads as a set of disconnected pale fragments against black rock, which is close to the best result available. Under a torch the same animal is a candy stick, which is a problem for the shrimp and a gift to photographers.

The cave itself is the other half. It is dark, current-fed, predator-poor and permanently available, and the animals that specialize in it converge on the same solutions from completely different families.

This one is a four-centimeter banded shrimp that spends the day deep in the rock and comes out over the reef after dark.

## Also known as

- **English:** candycane shrimp
- **Japanese:** リュウグウモエビ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Koror misticius* Clark, 1989

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/candycane-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 19, 2026*