Seahorse facts
Seahorse facts
According to the Guinness Book of World Records (2009), seahorse if the slowest moving fish. In fact, the dwarf seahorse speed is about 5 feet (150 cm) per hour. Meanwhile, when seahorses find a mate, they wrap their tails around each other so the tide doesn’t drift them apart. During this time they may change color. Also, swimming side by side holding tails or grip the same strand of sea grass with their tails and wheel around in unison, so-called “pre-dawn dance”.
Noteworthy, they have that one mate for the rest of their lives! And when the mate dies, its partner dies too.
Seahorse is the title given to 54 species of marine fish in the genus Hippocampus. “Hippocampus” comes from the Ancient Greek hippos meaning “horse” and kampos meaning “sea monster”.
Reproduction is energetically costly to the male. This brings into question why the sexual role reversal even takes place. In an environment where one partner incurs more energy costs than the other, Bateman’s principle suggests that the lesser contributor takes the role of the aggressor. Male seahorses are more aggressive and sometimes “fight” for female attention.
Seahorse populations are thought to have been endangered in recent years by over fishing and habitat destruction. The seahorse is used in traditional Chinese herbology, and as many as 20 million seahorses may be caught each year and sold for this purpose.
Maybe the ocean is beyond powerful, for it holds precious jewels and nutrients that help humanity survive. We need its waters, we crave its roughness, and depend on it to teach us lifelong lessons.
Sea horses have bony rings instead of scales, and their eyes can move independently. They swim upright, propelling themselves horizontally with their fins and vertically with their swim bladder. They catch small organisms by sucking them quickly into their small mouths. The female deposits her eggs into a brood pouch beneath the male’s tail, and the male expels the newly hatched young.
Radical new armor based on sea creature’s tail revealed by Researchers who found interlocking plates on the tail can withstand huge amounts of pressure. The now hope to develop a ‘skin’ based on the design, which could be used to protect bomb disposal robots, and even soldiers. The tail’s exceptional flexibility is due to its structure, made up of bony, armored plates, which slide past each other, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, found.