Uniquely Charming Ocean Creatures, Including the Pink Sea Horse You’ve Likely Never Encountered Before
Allow us to introduce you to Hippocampus bargibanti, also known as the Bargibanti seahorse or dwarf seahorse.
Seahorses inhabit tropical and temperate seas around the world. Most of them dwell in the moderately cold seas around Australia and New Zealand, but they also inhabit the western part of Europe bordering the Atlantic Ocean, in the English Channel (a long stretch of the Atlantic Ocean between Great Britain and the north coast of France, adjacent to the North Sea) and the mouth of the Thames.
But do you truly comprehend seahorses?
At first glance, one can discern the origin of the word “horse” in its name. The body of the seahorse appears fragile, and the end of the tail resembles a worm.
Initially, seahorses seem to lack scales. Instead, thin skin stretches over a series of bony discs, arranged in rings throughout their body. Each species has a different number of rings. Seahorses, together with seadragons and pipefish, form the family Syngnathidae.
Poor swimmers
In terms of swimming skills, they have little in common with fish: seahorses are terrible swimmers. However, one can’t blame them because they swim upright, meaning they weren’t designed for swimming.
As if that wasn’t enough, they completely lack the caudal fin typical of fish. To move forward, they use dorsal fins and fins on both sides to control their motion.
Hippocampus zosterae is the slowest fish in the world, with a maximum speed of 1.5 meters per hour. For comparison, some snails can reach 3 meters per hour (0.003 km/h).
At 4 centimeters (1.6 inches) long, the pygmy seahorse is one of the smallest members of the fish family. However, they can be even smaller than that, with seahorses as tiny as 1.5 cm. On the other hand, the larger ones can have a body length of up to 35 cm.
How Romantic!
Seahorses come in various colors, especially reds, oranges, yellows, greens, and grays, along with many patterns like stripes, dots, and playful wiggles. These little creatures can even change their color to camouflage themselves.
But that’s not all. Every morning at dawn, the female swims up to the male and invites the males to dance: they change color, spin, swim together across their habitat, their tails entwined tightly together. You must be captivated, right? Afterward, the pairs separate, and each individual seahorse dedicates itself to its daily tasks, which primarily revolve around eating. We will delve into this further in the following sections.
Pregnant Seahorse Dads!
Seahorses also engage in dance rituals throughout the mating season. When seahorses perform their courtship dances, both partners take on the same color, indicating their connection. It’s so sweet!
This flirtatious behavior typically lasts for days. They intertwine their tails – biologists believe this is how seahorses collaborate during the reproductive cycle.
The male can fertilize the eggs as soon as he receives them. During mating, female seahorses deposit up to 2000 eggs at a time into the male’s pouch. That’s right – male seahorses become pregnant, a process that lasts about 9 to 45 days.
On that momentous day, approximately 100 to 1000 live seahorses are born. However, they must fend for themselves as soon as they are born, as their parents are preoccupied with the next breeding season. Less than 0.5% of seahorses survive to adulthood.
Good Night and Hold On Tight…
To prevent being swept away to unknown places while sleeping, seahorses use their tails to securely wrap around seaweed or coral branches. This is also how they wait for their prey. Seahorses are skilled stalkers – they don’t have much choice. After all, they are generally not agile and certainly lack sharp teeth. In fact, they have no teeth.
Always in the State: Where is the food, where is the food?
So, they patiently wait and cleverly camouflage themselves until potential prey swims near their mouths. Using this tactic, seahorses consume about 3,000 small crustaceans, tiny shrimp, water lice, or fish larvae per day. Seahorses use their tubular mouths to swiftly suck in prey and swallow it, creating the signature “click” sound of seahorses.
And so on. Seahorses spend up to 10 hours hunting because they are always hungry. Seahorses don’t have stomachs, which means they have to eat continuously since the food goes straight to their digestive system. Nature is truly astonishing, isn’t it?
Be Kind to the Seahorses
Although they can camouflage themselves quite well, they still can’t escape from humans. The seahorse trade is thriving.
They are dried, ground, and used in soups, teas, or rice wine. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the use of seahorses is believed to help treat male sexual disorders, respiratory problems, asthma, aches and pains, and erectile dysfunction.
What’s more, more than 20 million seahorses die from being caught accidentally in fishing nets.
Although Washington has banned their trade in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 2004, dried seahorses are still available for sale, fetching prices around $600 to $3000 per kilogram at markets in Bangkok or Hong Kong.
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