Originally Posted by fastazzr1
and why isnt a green wolf eel an eel?
The True Eels, Order Anguilliformes, lack pelvic fins and related skeletal material. Some are also without pectoral finnage and suspensory girdle. Many are scale-less, those with them are cycloid, small, embedded. These "snake-like" fishes (many head-lengths into body length) typically have small gill openings, and their gills lack the rakers of advanced bony fishes. The group is missing a number of head bones, pyloric caeca, and have a peculiar leptocephalus larval stage in common. According to Nelson (3d ed.) there are some three suborders, fifteen families, 141 genera and 738 described species of true eels.
This fish from the Indo-West Pacific is neither an eel nor a blenny (and most certainly not a wolf). Other common names include the carpet eel blenny or just plain ol' eel blenny. As described in detail in Fish Tales 2004-4, this fish is a member of the Pseudochromidae (Dottyback) family. Attaining a full-grown length of 45cm makes it one of the largest in that family; Pseudoplesiops typus is the largest, reaching 46cm. One useful attribute of this fish is that it is sexually dichromatic; meaning the males (figure 1) are green, while the females (figure 2) are a more drab gray/brown with a pinkish hue that seems to vary in intensity. Additional species descriptions can be found here and here.
