A knobbly, upturned face lying in the sand with everything else buried - eyes up, mouth up, and no outline a person can resolve. Twenty-five centimeters (10 in) of ambush.
It walks. The two lowest rays of each pectoral fin are detached from the rest of the fin and thickened into fingers, and the fish uses them as legs, creeping across the bottom one step at a time. It is not swimming and it is not crawling on its belly - it is walking, slowly, in a way that stirs up nothing and looks like nothing.
If that fails, it does the other thing. The dull fish opens its pectoral fins and their undersides are brilliant - orange, yellow, black bands, entirely hidden a second earlier. The display is a warning, and behind it stand grooved venomous spines along the back.
A sting from any member of this family is a hot-water case: the venom is protein, and 45 C (113 F) for 30 to 90 minutes breaks it down, then a doctor. Nothing about this animal is aggressive. Every injury is a hand or a knee that came down on a patch of sand that turned out not to be sand.
The species. Inimicus filamentosus (Cuvier 1829) - with filaments. ETYFish
- knobbly upturned face with eyes and mouth pointing up
- dull brown, gray or rust, usually under a layer of sand
- two lowest pectoral rays on each side separate, used as legs
- flashes brilliant orange, yellow and black fin undersides when disturbed
- length up to 25 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no major threats known to impact this species.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
