Half-lined cardinal

Amazing fact

Male half-lined cardinals keep eggs in their mouths until they hatch.

新潟市水族館マリンピア日本海

Half-lined cardinal in its habitat (illustration)

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An illustration based on the real animal.

A little discovery to share.

Male half-lined cardinals keep eggs in their mouths until they hatch.

Source新潟市水族館マリンピア日本海 — ネンブツダイ

THE REAL WORLD

The real Half-lined cardinal

Scientific name: Ostorhinchus semilineatus
Japanese name: ネンブツダイ
Group: Ocean animals

Order: Kurtiformes
Family: Apogonidae
Genus: Ostorhinchus

Facts about the real animal.

Where the name “Half-lined cardinal” comes from

The lineatus part of its scientific name means “lined” in Latin.

Museums Victoria

It is also listed under the scientific name Apogon semilineatus.

It lives widely from the coasts of Japan and the Seto Inland Sea to Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and northwestern Australia.

鳥羽水族館 — ネンブツダイ

It has a short black band running through the eye to the gill cover, and above it another black band that reaches the middle of the body.

鳥羽水族館 — ネンブツダイ

How the Half-lined cardinal lives

It is active at night. At night, it feeds over sandy areas. It forms large schools over rocky seabeds. In the summer breeding season, a male and female leave the school and establish a territory.

新潟市水族館マリンピア日本海 Museums Victoria

Basic data

Range: Kitakanegasawa in Aomori, Sea of Japan and East China Sea coasts from Yamagata to southern Kyushu, and elsewhere

鳥羽水族館

Where the Half-lined cardinal has been recorded

Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF

Where it livesJapan Asia Australia Coasts

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: ネンブツダイ
简体中文: 半线鹦天竺鲷
繁體中文: 半線鸚天竺鯛
한국어: 줄도화돔
Português (Brasil): Cardeal-de-viseira-preta

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 — ネンブツダイChecked: 2026-11-04
Museums Victoria — Blacktip Cardinalfish, Ostorhinchus semilineatusChecked: 2026-11-07
新潟市水族館マリンピア日本海 — ネンブツダイChecked: 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.

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