Cleaner Fish Wear "Uniforms"

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"Like police and nurses, cleaner fish on coral reefs wear uniforms to signal their "professions"—a tactic that also helps the fish avoid being eaten by their clients, a new study says."

Cleaner Fish Wear "Uniforms" to Advertise, Avoid Danger

 

Awesome article!!

 

Very interesting article. Cleaner shrimps have a similar stripe pattern and their bodies can become a yellow hue. Maybe almost the same deal for the shrimps as the wrasse. I'm surprised they didn't do any studies on the cleaning shrimps.

 

Was thinking the same thing,their colors and stripes do stand out.
Does this mean you can dress up like a cleaner fish and not get ate by sharks? Bet they don't test that theory .

 

When I was running the shop, I stopped into a competitor's store and they were selling mimic cleaner blennys as real cleaners. The owner wasn't there that day and the employees didn't believe me. I said, "If you sell those mimics as cleaners, you're going to have some pretty mad customers once they start attacking their fish". Sure enough, a couple days later, people were complaining about "defective" cleaner wrasses at XYZ LFS.