A fish shaped like a dead leaf, with skin like velvet and a crest rising over its head, rocking gently on silty bottom. Almost nobody finds one, and the ones who do are usually looking for something else.
The skin is the name. Velvetfishes have no scales; the surface is covered in tiny prickles that give it a matte, dusty texture, and things settle on it - silt, algae, diatoms - so an old fish is genuinely overgrown and looks like debris rather than an animal.
The act is completed by the movement. Rather than holding still, it sways with the surge at the rhythm of the water around it, which is exactly what a waterlogged leaf does, and predators looking for the stillness that gives away a hiding fish find motion instead.
It eats small crustaceans, taken with a quick gulp from a fish that otherwise barely moves. Muck sites and silty rubble slopes are where to look, at night, slowly, and mostly in vain.
- leaf-shaped body, flattened side to side, with a tall crest over the head
- velvety skin with no visible scales
- rocks slowly back and forth in the surge like a drifting leaf
- length up to 10 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
