Lesson's sweetlips
Amazing fact
Young Lesson’s sweetlips are thought to protect themselves by resembling the striped eel catfish, which has venomous spines.
沖縄美ら海水族館
No sign-up needed. You can save notes on this device.
An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
Young Lesson’s sweetlips are thought to protect themselves by resembling the striped eel catfish, which has venomous spines.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Lesson's sweetlips
- Scientific name
- Plectorhinchus lessonii
- Japanese name
- ヒレグロコショウダイ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Order
- Acanthuriformes
- Family
- Haemulidae
- Genus
- Plectorhinchus
Where the name “Lesson's sweetlips” comes from
Lesson’s sweetlips gets its Japanese name, Hireguro-koshoudai, from the black front part of its pelvic fins.
海遊館It lives from Japan's southern islands and the Ryukyus to Taiwan, southern China and the Indo-West Pacific.
In Japan young fish are often seen, but adults are seldom found outside Okinawa.
How the Lesson's sweetlips lives
Young fish have white stripes on a black body. Adults have brown stripes, with stripes below their eyes too. The fins other than the pelvic fins have black spots on a yellow background.
沖縄美ら海水族館国立科学博物館海遊館Basic data
- Range
- Hachijojima, Yakushima, Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, Indo-West Pacific, Micronesia, and elsewhere
Where the Lesson's sweetlips has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- ヒレグロコショウダイ
- 简体中文
- 少耙胡椒鲷
- 繁體中文
- 雷氏胡椒鯛
- Español
- Bakoko de Lesson
- Français
- Gaterin de Lesson
- Português (Brasil)
- Peixe-arlequim-de-Lesson
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — ヒレグロコショウダイChecked: 2026-11-04
- 海遊館 — ヒレグロコショウダイChecked: 2026-11-07
- 沖縄美ら海水族館 — ヒレグロコショウダイChecked: 2026-11-07
- 国立科学博物館 — Plectorhinchus lessoniiChecked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
Report a mistakeRELATIVES
Others in Haemulidae
MORE TO MEET
