Fangs without the venom, and that is the whole trick.
Several blennies in this family carry a pair of long curved canines in the lower jaw. In the genus Meiacanthus those teeth are grooved and fed by venom glands, and a predator that swallows one gets bitten inside the mouth and spits it straight back out. Petroscirtes has the teeth and no glands at all. It looks armed, it is not, and it gets by on the reputation of the fish it resembles.
The other thing worth knowing is where it puts its eggs. This blenny nests inside anything hollow lying on the bottom: an empty bivalve shell, a dead worm tube, a discarded bottle, a rusting can. The male takes the container, cleans out the inside, and guards the clutch stuck to the wall of it. A bottle dropped on a sand flat becomes a nursery within a season.
It is a fish of weed, rubble and drifting algae rather than clean coral, and it can darken or pale its mottling to match whatever it has settled on.
The genus. Petroscirtes Rüppell 1830 - petro (stone) + scirtes (to leap). ETYFish
- tall sail-like dorsal fin, highest at the front
- mottled brown to olive body with a dark stripe through the eye
- pair of long curved canines in the lower jaw
- usually near weed, debris or empty shells rather than clean coral
- up to 11 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
