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Carapus boraborensis
A species of slender, ray-finned fish in the family Carapidae. It is found in the tropical Indo-Pacific Ocean and normally lives inside the body cavity of a sea cucumber, its prefered host is the leopard sea cucumber (Bohadschia argus).
Lady Elliot Island's shallow coral lagoon, in the Coral sea at the south end of the Great Barrier Reef.
This bizarre little fish lives inside the anus of a Leopard sea cucumber (Bohadschia argus). I was filming a number of different fishes in the shallows, and only took a short clip of this sea cucumber. It wasn't until I looked at the footing that I saw the little pearlfish. Pearlfish get their name from the members of their family that live inside oysters.
Spotted on Sep 21, 2013
Submitted on Oct 27, 2013
4 Comments
Sightly better video finally posted. See the anus dwelling fish!
I hope you can fix the video.
I know. It lives in a sea cucumber bottom! From what I've read the sea cucumber is not getting anything out of the "relationship". Nature, weirder than anything we can imagine. The video I put up at youtube is a too cropped. I'll see if I can fix that so you can see the fish better.
Amazing!