Hawaiian Cleaner Shrimp

Hawaiian Cleaner Shrimp belongs to the family Lysmatidae. These beautiful tiny shrimps are native to the Indo-Pacific Ocean, but mostly just in Hawaii. You can find these little guys hidden in crevices and holes on reefs, doing what they do best, cleaning!

Hawaiian cleaner shrimp have a long thin body (only reaches about 2.5 in) with thin straw-like legs. Their body color is very distinctive and bright. Their legs and majority of their body is a pale amber color, while their top side has a large band of scarlet with a stripe of white from head to tail (like a skunk). They also have 2 pairs of large white antennae.

The reason this shrimp is called a cleaner shrimp, is because of their dieting and feeding habits. The Hawaiian cleaner shrimp uses its front to legs to pick and clean parasites off fish and coral. This makes up a huge portion of their diet. These shrimps will set up “cleaning stations” on reefs where fish can come to their station and stop for them to clean all the parasites and dead skin off. This type of relationship is called a symbiotic cleaning.

*** They used to have a touch pool at Georgia Aquarium a few years ago where you could place your hand in the water and cleaner shrimp would come on your hand and start cleaning them! It doesn’t hurt, only tickles but I will say if you have a hang nail, they might try to snatch that off. Just doing their job

✨

✨

#hawaiiancleanershrimp #shrimp #coralreef #savethecoral #oceanfacts #educate #themoreyouknow #marinezoologist #marinelife #oceancreatures #animalfacts #animals #oceananimals #animallover #sealife #seaanimals #ocean #marineconservation #keeptheseaplasticfree #wildlifeseekers #wildlifeconservation #savetheocean #savetheplanet #marinebiology #oceanography #zoology #zoologist #explore #explorepage #tarimahthezoologist

🐬🐋🦈🐡🐙🐧🦦🐠🦑

Fun Fact: Scientists believe, through their pair of stalked eyes, the cleaner shrimp have coarse vision and are color blind.