---
title: Crinoid shrimp (Brucecaris tenuis)
scientific_name: Brucecaris tenuis
common_name: Crinoid shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-03T13:13:40.917Z
updated: 2026-08-15T08:29:42.163Z
tags: Crinoid shrimp, Brucecaris tenuis, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/crinoid-shrimp
---

# Crinoid shrimp (*Brucecaris tenuis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 3 cm
- **Depth:** 10-40 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Among the arms of feather stars
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- slender shrimp banded in the exact colors of its host feather star
- long thin legs, walking along the arms rather than swimming
- usually deep in the middle of the crinoid, near the disc
- length up to 3 cm

A shrimp painted in the colors of the feather star it lives on - black and yellow on a black and yellow crinoid, red on a red one - and the pattern follows the host so closely that photographs of the same species from two reefs look like two animals.

That is the arrangement across a whole guild of small animals here: shrimps, squat lobsters, clingfish and brittle stars, each living on a crinoid and each matching it. A feather star is a bad thing to eat - stiff, spiny, chemically defended - so anything that can pass for part of one is safe.

It walks along the arms rather than swimming, feeds on the particles the crinoid collects and on its mucus, and stays near the middle where the disc gives cover.

Three centimeters (1.2 in). The way to find one is to stop at a feather star, look at the base of the arms, and wait for a leg to move. Nothing about the shape helps until then.

## Also known as

- **Japanese:** ホソウミシダヤドリエビ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Periclimenes tenuis* Bruce, 1969

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/crinoid-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*