---
title: Elephant Ear Anemone (Amplexidiscus fenestrafer)
scientific_name: Amplexidiscus fenestrafer
common_name: Elephant Ear Anemone
taxon: Corallimorpharia
published: 2026-08-11T10:12:03.881Z
updated: 2026-08-11T10:31:44.642Z
tags: Elephant Ear Anemone, Amplexidiscus fenestrafer, Corallimorpharia, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/corallimorpharia/elephant-ear-anemone
---

# Elephant Ear Anemone (*Amplexidiscus fenestrafer*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Corallimorpharia (*Corallimorpharia*)
- **Size:** up to 40 cm across
- **Depth:** 3-25 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sheltered reef and lagoon floors, on rock and dead coral
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Fission, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Venomous

## How to recognise it

- huge flat disc up to 40 cm across, far larger than other corallimorphs
- surface covered in short blunt tentacles like felt
- pale ring around the mouth, body brown to gray-green
- edges can fold inward like a closing purse

A flat disc up to 40 cm (16 in) across, brown to gray-green, its surface covered in short blunt tentacles that give it the texture of felt, with a pale ring around the central mouth. Corallimorphs sit between anemones and stony corals - the anatomy of a coral polyp without the skeleton - and this is by far the largest of them here.

The innocent look is a trap. When a small fish settles onto the disc, the margins fold inward and close over it like a purse being drawn shut, and the animal digests what it caught. Aquarium keepers know the behavior well, because a tank with one of these acquires it as a permanent hazard for anything small enough to fit.

It spreads by splitting rather than spawning: a disc grows, stretches and tears into two, and a rock can end up carpeted by identical clones of one founder. That is also why a colony looks so uniform - it is not a crowd, it is a single animal that kept dividing.

## Also known as

- **English:** giant elephant's ear mushroom coral, elephant ear anemone, giant cup mushroom coral, giant disc anemone, giant elephant's ear anemone
- **French:** Anémone-oreille d'éléphant
- **German:** Großes Elefantenohr
- **Portuguese:** Cogumelo-do-mar-gigante
- **Czech:** korálovník bariérový
- **Japanese:** オオイソギンチャクモドキ
- **Russian:** Дискоактиния слоновье ухо
- **TH:** เห็ดทะเลถ้วย, เห็ดหูช้าง

## Scientific synonyms

- *Discosoma fenestrafera* (Dunn & Hamner, 1980)

## Range

Central Indo-Pacific, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/corallimorpharia/elephant-ear-anemone)*
*Updated: August 11, 2026*