---
title: Sexy Shrimp (Thor amboinensis)
scientific_name: Thor amboinensis
common_name: Sexy Shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-08-27T15:54:17.284Z
updated: 2026-08-13T13:25:26.363Z
tags: Sexy Shrimp, Thor amboinensis, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/sexy-shrimp
---

# Sexy Shrimp (*Thor amboinensis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 1.6 cm
- **Depth:** 1-60 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** On anemones, corallimorphs and bubble corals
- **Reproduction:** Brooder, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- tiny olive-brown shrimp with white saddles edged in blue
- abdomen held curled up over the back, waving constantly
- in small groups on a single anemone
- length up to 1.6 cm

A shrimp the size of a grain of rice, olive-brown with white saddles edged in electric blue, sitting on an anemone with its abdomen curled up over its back and waving. The waving never stops, and it is what named the animal.

What the display is for is not settled: it may advertise the shrimp to its own kind, or signal to the anemone, or make a very small animal look like something moving in the current rather than food. They live in groups of a few on one host, and the whole group waves.

Living on an anemone requires not being stung, and this shrimp acclimates the same way clownfish do - by touching the tentacles repeatedly until the anemone stops treating it as prey. It then feeds on mucus, scraps from the host's meals and detritus, and shelters among the tentacles whenever anything approaches.

It is one of the standard subjects of macro photography here for good reason: it is common, it stays put, and it is small enough that most divers swim past a hundred without seeing one.

## Also known as

- **English:** squat anemone shrimp, Humpbacked Shrimp, Popcorn Shrimp
- **Hebrew:** נקיין השושנות
- **French:** Crevette de Thor, Crevette danseuse
- **Italian:** Gamberetto gobbo degli anemoni, Gamberetto sexy degli anemoni, Gamberetto thor
- **German:** Hohlkreuzgarnele
- **Spanish:** Camarón jorobado
- **Portuguese:** Camarão-da-anémona
- **Dutch:** Sexy Garnaal
- **Japanese:** イソギンチャクモエビ
- **Chinese:** 安波托蝦, 安邦托蝦, 性感蝦
- **Russian:** Сидячая креветка-чистильщик

## Scientific synonyms

- *Hippolyte amboinensis* De Man, 1888
- *Thor discosomatis* Kemp, 1916

## Range

Antigua and Barbuda, Atoll Fangataufa, Bora-Bora, Caribbean Sea, Chilean Exclusive Economic Zone (Easter Island), Dominica, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, Lesser Antilles, Marquesas Islands, Mozambique, Mozambique Channel, New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone, North Atlantic Ocean, South Pacific Ocean, Tuamotu Islands, Tweed-Moreton, Venezuela

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/sexy-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*