Cleaner fish are fish that provide a service to other fish species by removing dead skin and ectoparasites. This cleaning symbiosis is an example of mutualism, an ecological interaction that benefits both parties involved, though cleaning may grade into parasitism.
A wide variety of fishes have been observed to display cleaning behaviors including wrasses, cichlids, catfish, and gobies, as well as by a number of different species of cleaner shrimp. By convergent evolution, different species of cleaner fish often resemble each other. There is also at least one predatory mimic, the sabre-toothed blenny, that mimics cleaner fish but in fact feeds on healthy scales and mucus.
Read more about Cleaner Fish: Mimicry
Famous quotes containing the words cleaner and/or fish:
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“Everything seems beautiful because you don’t understand. Those flying fish, they’re not leaping for joy, they’re jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence. There’s no beauty here, only death and decay.”
—Curtis Siodmak (1902–1988)