---
title: Warty Sea Cucumber (Stichopus horrens)
scientific_name: Stichopus horrens
common_name: Warty Sea Cucumber
taxon: Sea cucumber
conservation_status: DD - Data Deficient
published: 2026-08-05T23:57:33.638Z
updated: 2026-08-20T17:09:45.997Z
tags: Warty Sea Cucumber, Stichopus horrens, Sea cucumber, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/echinoderms/sea-cucumber/warty-sea-cucumber
---

# Warty Sea Cucumber (*Stichopus horrens*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Sea cucumber (*Holothuroidea*)
- **Size:** up to 25 cm
- **Depth:** 1-25 m
- **Diet:** Detritivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral rubble and hard bottom near reef
- **Conservation status:** DD - Data Deficient

## How to recognise it

- square-sided body with large knobby tubercles
- highly variable color, mottled brown to olive
- soft body wall that slackens when handled
- length up to 25 cm

A squarish-bodied sea cucumber to about 25 cm (10 in), covered in large knobby tubercles and colored so variably - mottled brown, olive, rust, sometimes with pale saddles - that color is no help in naming it. The tubercles and the angular cross-section are the useful marks; Holothuria species beside it are rounder and smoother.

It lives on coral rubble and hard bottom near reef from about 1 m to 25 m (3 to 80 ft), hiding by day and grazing surfaces at night. Its most remarkable trick is in the skin: the body wall can switch within seconds between stiff and almost liquid, a property of mutable collagenous tissue that lets the animal pour itself into a crevice a fraction of its own width. Pushed too far, a stressed individual will begin to disintegrate outright, which is why specimens handled by divers sometimes seem to melt. The same material has drawn a good deal of research attention, since nothing in vertebrate anatomy does anything comparable.

## Also known as

- **English:** Selenka's Sea Cucumber, Warty Sea Cucumber, Dragonfish
- **French:** Holothurie hérissée
- **Japanese:** オニイボナマコ, タマナマコ
- **Chinese:** 糙刺參, 花刺參
- **Russian:** Стихопус бородавчатый

## Scientific synonyms

- *Holothuria lutea* Quoy & Gaimard, 1834
- *Stichopus godeffroyi* Semper, 1868
- *Stichopus godeffroyi var. pygmaeus* Semper, 1868
- *Stichopus Godefroyi* Semper, 1868
- *Stichopus tropicalis* Fisher, 1907
- *Stichopus variegatus* Semper, 1868

## Range

Madagascar

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/echinoderms/sea-cucumber/warty-sea-cucumber)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*