---
title: Spanish Dancer (Hexabranchus sanguineus)
scientific_name: Hexabranchus sanguineus
common_name: Spanish Dancer
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2024-11-25T21:44:26.414Z
updated: 2026-08-12T08:12:12.179Z
tags: Spanish Dancer, Hexabranchus sanguineus, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/spanish-dancer
---

# Spanish Dancer (*Hexabranchus sanguineus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 40 cm
- **Depth:** 1-50 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Reef and rubble, out in the open after dark
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- very large red to orange slug with white mottling, mantle edges rolled up at rest
- six feathery gills in a rosette at the rear, not retractable
- unrolls the mantle and swims with slow undulations when disturbed
- length up to 40 cm

The largest sea slug on the reef, up to 40 cm (16 in) here, red to orange mottled with white, with six feathery gills standing in a rosette at the rear that cannot be pulled in. At rest the mantle edges are rolled up and the animal reads as a lump; disturbed, it unrolls them and swims, flexing the whole body in slow waves. The Victorian naturalists who named the effect saw a flamenco dress, and the name stuck in every language.

Swimming is unusual enough in sea slugs to be worth understanding: it is an escape from bottom predators, not a way of getting around, and an animal in the water column is one that has decided the reef is more dangerous than the open water above it.

The defense is borrowed. It feeds on a sponge that produces macrolide toxins, concentrates them, and lays them into its own tissue and - at far higher strength - into its eggs. The pink egg ribbon coiled like a rose is more poisonous than the adult that laid it.

And it comes with tenants. A small commensal shrimp lives on the mantle of most large individuals, colored to match its host exactly, feeding on its mucus. Photograph the slug, then look again at the photograph.

## Also known as

- **English:** Bloody Spanish Dancer, Red-margined Spanish Dancer, Spanish dancer
- **Hebrew:** רקדנית ספרדייה
- **French:** Danseuse espagnole
- **Italian:** Ballerina spagnola
- **German:** Spanische Tänzerin
- **Spanish:** Bailarina española
- **Portuguese:** Bailarina-espanhola
- **Dutch:** Spaanse Danseres
- **Polish:** Hiszpańska tancerka
- **Japanese:** ミカドウミウシ
- **Chinese:** 血紅六鰓海麒麟
- **TH:** ทากสเปนเต้นระบำ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Albania formosa* Collingwood, 1881
- *Doris imperialis* Saville-Kent, 1897
- *Doris sanguinea* Rüppell & Leuckart, 1830
- *Hexabranchus petersi* Bergh, 1878
- *Hexabranchus plicatus* Hägg, 1901
- *Hexabranchus praetextus* Ehrenberg, 1828
- *Hexabranchus suezensis* Abraham, 1876

## Range

Indian Ocean, Mozambique

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/spanish-dancer)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*