Red Herring

A red herring is a species of medium-sized herring found across the tropical and subtropical waters of the Caribbean Sea. It is the only known schooling fish, not a reef fish, to be poisonous as a defense against (most) predators, even humans and great white sharks, and the red herring warns any predator that they are nasty tasting with their bright red colors, in a fashion similar to monarch butterflies' colors that warn predators that they're poisonous to eat. Due to their toxic flesh, they are the least social of the herrings, living in shoals up to about 15-50 in a single group at a time. However, the three predators are immune to the toxic flesh of the red herring, the Caribbean wounder, the Atlantic sea otter, and the extinct Caribbean dwarf dylanus, which primarily eat aquatic animals such as crustaceans and fish. The conservation status of the red herring is Least Concern due to successful conservation efforts, the red herring's tolerance to most of human activities, and invasive lion fish.