--- title: Brown-blotched Pancake Dorid (Platydoris scabra) scientific_name: Platydoris scabra common_name: Brown-blotched Pancake Dorid taxon: Nudibranch published: 2026-08-26T12:52:27.547Z updated: 2026-08-26T14:51:16.826Z tags: Brown-blotched Pancake Dorid, Platydoris scabra, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/brown-blotched-pancake-dorid --- # Brown-blotched Pancake Dorid (*Platydoris scabra*) ## Quick facts - **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*) - **Size:** up to 10 cm - **Diet:** Spongivore - **Activity:** Nocturnal - **Rarity:** Uncommon - **Habitat:** Under slabs and in cracks by day, on open rock at night - **Reproduction:** Simultaneous hermaphrodite, Egg layer - **Hazard:** Poisonous ## How to recognise it - broad irregular dark-brown bands across a gray-brown ground - the bands run across the animal rather than along it, breaking the oval into pieces - flat, stiff and pressed hard against the rock - ten centimeters, and still not obviously an animal Look at how the pattern is arranged, because it is doing something different from almost everything else in this section. Most of the sea slugs here are painted to be recognized. Rings, rims, stripes and spots on a clean ground, colors that stay the same from one reef to the next, because the whole point is that a fish should see the pattern, remember the bad experience that went with it, and leave the next one alone. Those animals want a clear outline. This one is painted to be lost. Broad irregular bands of dark brown run across a gray-brown ground, cutting the animal into sections at angles that have nothing to do with its own shape, and they run over the margin so the edge of the slug and the edge of a dark band are the same line. From above, a ten-centimeter (4 in) oval stops being an oval. That is disruptive coloration, the same principle as a warship's dazzle paint, and it works on shape rather than on color. The body suits it. Platydoris are the flattest and hardest of the dorids, and this one holds itself pressed down against the rock with no raised edge anywhere, which is both difficult to bite and difficult to see as something separate from the surface it is on. It is the largest of its genus here and among the older names in this catalogue, described by Cuvier in 1804. It spends the day wedged under slabs and in cracks that a thicker animal could not enter, and grazes sponges on open rock after dark. ## Also known as - **English:** Brown-blotched Pancake Dorid - **French:** Platydoris rugueuse - **Japanese:** カミヤスリウミウシ - **Russian:** Платидорис шершавый ## Scientific synonyms - *Doris scabra* Cuvier, 1804 - *Platydoris eurychlamys* Bergh, 1877 - *Platydoris iredalei* J. K. Allan, 1932 - *Platydoris noumeae* Risbec, 1928 ## Range Mozambique --- *Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/brown-blotched-pancake-dorid)* *Updated: August 26, 2026*