Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasse

Many animated films have taken animals, placing them in human situations to give them a better appeal to audiences, particularly children. One such movie would be Shark Tale, which features the star-studded voice cast of Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Jack Black, Renée Zellweger, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. The movie tells the story of Oscar, an underachieving fish posing as a shark slayer. He ends up being chased by the marine mob, composed of the sharks, because he allegedly killed the mob leader’s son. He finds a way to clear things out and even makes friends with the sharks. The movie dazzled audience, showing how colorful coral reefs are with hundreds of deferent species of fishes and other aquatic animals.

Will Smith’s character is a bluestreak cleaner wrasse, one of the more common fishes that you will find in the coral reefs of Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Red Sea. They are called cleaners because these fish actually hang around larger fish and “clean” or eat the dead tissue and parasites off their bodies. They actually stay in a certain spot where bigger fish go to, to be cleaned.

Some fish have actually adopted and mimicked how the bluestreak cleaner wrasse moves so that they can come closer and tear off small bits of flesh and skin from bigger fish. Some also look very similar to the cleaner as a way for them to use these bigger fishes to protect themselves from natural predators.

One odd thing about bluestreak cleaner wrasse is their gender. The species actually start off as females, staying in groups of 6 to 8 fish with usually one lone male specimen in the group. When the male specimen dies, a strong and able female changes sex in a process called sequential hermaphroditism. They can grow to about four inches long and have a common lifespan of four years.

 Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasse Video