The seahorse is a small-sized fish that is a member of the Needle family from the order Sticklebacks. Studies have shown that the seahorse is a highly modified needlefish. Today, the seahorse is a fairly rare creature. In this article you will find a description and photo seahorse, you will learn a lot of new and interesting things about this extraordinary creation.

The seahorse looks very unusual and the shape of the body resembles a chess piece of a horse. The seahorse fish has many long bony spines and various leathery outgrowths on its body. Thanks to this body structure, the seahorse looks invisible among the algae and remains inaccessible to predators. The seahorse looks amazing, it has small fins, its eyes rotate independently of each other, and its tail is twisted into a spiral. The seahorse looks diverse, because it can change the color of its scales.


The seahorse looks small, its size depends on the species and varies from 4 to 25 cm. In the water, the seahorse swims vertically, unlike other fish. This is due to the fact that the swim bladder of a seahorse consists of an abdominal and a head part. The head bladder is larger than the abdominal one, which allows the seahorse to maintain an upright position when swimming.


Now the seahorse is becoming less and less common and is on the verge of extinction due to the rapid decline in numbers. There are many reasons for the extinction of the seahorse. The main one is the destruction by man of both the fish itself and its habitats. Off the coast of Australia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, skates are massively caught. The exotic appearance and bizarre body shape caused people to start making gift souvenirs from them. For beauty, they artificially bend their tail and give the body the shape of the letter "S", but in nature the skates do not look like that.


Another reason that contributes to the reduction of the population seahorses is that they are a delicacy. Gourmets highly appreciate the taste of these fish, especially the eyes and liver of seahorses. In a restaurant, the cost of one serving of such a dish costs $ 800.


In total, there are about 50 species of seahorses, 30 of which are already listed in the Red Book. Fortunately, seahorses are very prolific and can produce over a thousand fry at one time, which keeps the seahorses from disappearing. Seahorses are bred in captivity, but this fish is very whimsical to keep. One of the most extravagant seahorses is the rag-picker seahorse, which you can see in the photo below.


The seahorse lives in tropical and subtropical seas. Seahorse fish lives mainly at shallow depths or near the coast and leads a sedentary lifestyle. The seahorse lives in dense thickets of algae and other marine vegetation. It attaches with its flexible tail to plant stems or corals, remaining almost invisible due to its body covered with various outgrowths and spikes.


The seahorse fish changes body color to blend in completely with environment. Thus, the seahorse successfully disguises itself not only from predators, but also during food production. The seahorse is very bony, so few people want to eat it. The main hunter of the seahorse is the large land crab. The seahorse can travel long distances. To do this, he attaches his tail to the fins. various fish and rests on them until the "free taxi" swims into the algae thickets.


What do seahorses eat?

Seahorses eat crustaceans and shrimps. Seahorses are very interesting eaters. The tubular stigma, like a pipette, draws prey into the mouth along with water. Seahorses eat quite a lot and hunt almost the whole day, taking short breaks for a couple of hours.


During the day, seahorses eat about 3 thousand planktonic crustaceans. But seahorses eat almost any food, as long as it does not exceed the size of the mouth. The seahorse fish is a hunter. With its flexible tail, the seahorse clings to algae and remains motionless until the prey is in the required proximity to the head. After that, the seahorse sucks in water along with food.


How do seahorses reproduce?

Seahorses breed quite in an unusual way because the male carries the fry. It is not uncommon for seahorses to have monogamous pairs. mating season Seahorses are an amazing sight. The couple, who are about to enter into a marriage union, are fastened with their tails and dance in the water. In the dance, the skates are pressed against each other, after which the male opens a special pocket in the abdominal region, into which the female throws eggs. In the future, the male bears offspring for a month.


Seahorses breed quite often and bring large offspring. A seahorse gives birth to one thousand or more fry at a time. Fry are born an absolute copy of adults, only very tiny. The babies that are born are left to their own devices. In nature, a seahorse lives for about 4-5 years.


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One appearance of these fish sets up pleasant associations with childhood, toys and fairy tales.

The horse swims in an upright position and tilts its head so gracefully that, looking at it, it is impossible not to compare it with some kind of small magic horse.

It is covered not with scales, but with bone plates. However, in his shell, he is so light and fast that he literally soars in the water, and his body shimmers with all colors - from orange to gray-blue, from lemon yellow to fiery red. By the brightness of the colors, it is just right to compare this fish with tropical birds.

Seahorses inhabit the coastal waters of tropical and subtropical seas. But they are also found in the North Sea, for example, off the southern coast of England. Choose quieter places; they don't like rough water.

Among them there are dwarfs the size of a little finger, and there are giants under thirty centimeters. The smallest species - Hippocampus zosterae (pygmy seahorse) - is found in the Gulf of Mexico. Its length does not exceed four centimeters, and the body is very hardy.

In Black and mediterranean seas you can meet the long-faced, spotted Hippocampus guttulatus, whose length reaches 12-18 centimeters. The most famous representatives of the species Hippocampus kuda, which lives off the coast of Indonesia. Seahorses of this species (their length is 14 centimeters) are painted brightly and colorfully, some are speckled, others are striped. The largest seahorses are found near Australia.

Whether they are dwarfs or giants, seahorses resemble each other like brothers: a trusting look, capricious lips and an elongated "horse" muzzle. Their tail is hooked to the stomach, and horns adorn their heads. It is impossible to confuse these graceful and colorful fish, similar to jewelry or toys, with any inhabitant of the water element.


How does pregnancy proceed in males?

Even now, zoologists find it difficult to say how many species of seahorses there are. Possibly 30-32 species, although this figure is subject to change. The fact is that seahorses are difficult to classify. Their appearance is too changeable. Yes, and they know how to hide in such a way that a needle thrown into a haystack will envy.

When Amanda Vincent of Montreal's McGill University began studying seahorses in the late 1980s, she was annoyed: "At first, I couldn't even notice those subs." Masters of mimicry, in a moment of danger, they change their color, repeating the color of surrounding objects. Therefore, they are easily mistaken for algae. Many seahorses, like gutta-percha babies, can even change the shape of their bodies. They have small growths and nodules. Some seahorses can be difficult to distinguish from corals.

This plasticity, this “color music” of the body helps them not only to fool enemies, but also to seduce partners. The German zoologist Rüdiger Verhasselt shares his observations: “I had a pink-red male in my aquarium. I put a bright yellow female with a red dot on him. The male began to look after the new fish and after a few days turned the same color as her - even red specks appeared.

In order to watch enthusiastic pantomimes and colorful confessions, one must go underwater early in the morning. In their confessions, they follow a funny etiquette: they nod their heads to greet a friend, while clinging to neighboring plants with their tails. Sometimes they freeze, getting closer in a “kiss”. Or whirl in a stormy love dance, and the males now and then inflate their stomachs.

The date is over - and the fish spread out to the sides. Adyu! See you next time! Seahorses usually live in monogamous pairs, loving each other to death, which they often have in the form of nets. After the death of a partner, his half misses, but after a few days or weeks he finds a roommate again. Seahorses settled in an aquarium suffer especially from the loss of a partner. And it happens that they die one after another, unable to bear the grief.

What is the secret of such affection? In the kindred of souls? Here's how biologists explain it: by regularly walking and caressing each other, seahorses synchronize their biological clocks. This helps them choose the most opportune moment for procreation. Then their meeting is delayed for several hours, or even days. They glow with excitement and whirl in a dance in which, as we remember, males inflate their stomachs. It turns out that the male has a wide fold on the abdomen, where the female lays her eggs.

Surprisingly, in seahorses, the male bears the offspring, having previously fertilized the eggs in the abdominal bag.

But this behavior is not as exotic as it might seem. Other species of fish are also known, for example, cichlids, in which males hatch caviar. But only in seahorses are we dealing with a process similar to pregnancy. fabric on inside the brood pouch in the male thickens, as in the uterus of mammals. This tissue becomes a kind of placenta; it binds the father's body to the embryos and nourishes them. This process is controlled by the hormone prolactin, which stimulates lactation in humans - the formation of mother's milk.

With the onset of pregnancy, walking through the underwater forests stops. The male stays in an area of ​​about one square meter. In order not to compete with him in obtaining food, the female delicately swims to the side.

After a month and a half, "birth" occurs. The seahorse presses against the kelp stalk and inflates its belly again. Sometimes a whole day passes before the first fry slips out of the bag. Then the young will start to emerge in pairs, faster and faster, and soon the bag will expand so much that dozens of fry will swim out of it at the same time. Number of newborns different types Miscellaneous: Some seahorses breed up to 1600 babies, while others have only two fry.

Sometimes the "birth" is so difficult that the males die of exhaustion. In addition, if for some reason the embryos die, then the male who carried them will also die.

Evolution cannot explain the origin of the seahorse's reproductive functions. The whole childbearing process is too "unorthodox." Indeed, the structure of the seahorse appears to be a mystery if you try to explain it as the result of evolution. As one major expert said a few years ago: “In relation to evolution, the seahorse is in the same category as the platypus. Since it is a mystery that confuses and destroys all theories trying to explain the origin of this fish! Recognize the Divine Creator, and everything is explained.

What do seahorses do if they don't flirt and expect offspring? One thing is certain: they do not shine with success in swimming, which is not surprising given their constitution. They have; only three small fins: the dorsal helps to swim forward, and the two gill fins maintain vertical balance and serve as a rudder. In a moment of danger, seahorses can briefly speed up their movement, flapping their fins up to 35 times per second (some scientists even call the number "70"). They are much better at vertical maneuvers. By changing the volume of the swim bladder, these fish move up and down in a spiral.

However, most of the time, the seahorse hangs motionless in the water, catching its tail on algae, coral, or even the neck of a relative. It seems that he is ready to hang around doing nothing all day. However, with visible laziness, he manages to catch a lot of prey - tiny crustaceans and fry. It has only recently been possible to observe how this happens.

The seahorse does not rush for prey, but waits until it swims up to it. Then he draws in the water, swallowing careless small fry. Everything happens so fast with a simple eye do not notice this. However, scuba divers say that when you get close to a seahorse, you sometimes hear smacking. The appetite of this fish is amazing: barely born, the seahorse manages to swallow about four thousand miniature shrimps in the first ten hours of life.

In total, he is destined to live, if he's lucky, four or five years. Enough time to leave behind millions of descendants. It seems that with such numbers, the prosperity of seahorses is ensured. However, it is not. Out of a thousand fry, only two survive on average. All the rest themselves fall into someone's mouth. However, in this whirlwind of births and deaths, seahorses have been afloat for forty million years. Only human intervention can destroy this species.

According to the World Foundation wildlife, the number of seahorses is rapidly declining. Thirty species of these fish are included in the Red Book, that is, almost all species known to science. The ecology is primarily responsible for this. The oceans are turning into a world dump. Its inhabitants degenerate and die.

Half a century ago, the Chesapeake Bay - a narrow, long bay off the coast of the US states of Maryland and Virginia (its length reaches 270 kilometers) - was considered a real paradise for seahorses. Now you can hardly find them there. Alison Scarratt, director of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, estimates that ninety percent of the algae in the bay have died in that half-century, due to water pollution. But algae were natural environment seahorse habitats.

Another reason for the decline is the massive capture of seahorses off the coast of Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and the Philippines. According to Amanda Vincent, at least 26 million of these fish are harvested every year. A small part of them then ends up in aquariums, and most die. For example, from these cute fish, drying them, they make souvenirs - brooches, key rings, belt buckles. By the way, for the sake of beauty, they bend their tail back, giving the body the shape of the letter S.

However, most of the captured seahorses - about twenty million according to the World Wildlife Fund - end up with pharmacists in China, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia and Singapore. The largest transshipment point for the sale of this "medical raw material" is Hong Kong. From here it is sold to more than thirty countries, including India and Australia. Here, a kilo of seahorses costs about $1,300.

From these dried fish, crushed and mixed with other substances, such as tree bark, drugs are prepared that are just as popular in Japan, Korea, China as we are - aspirin or analgin. They help with asthma, coughs, headaches and especially impotence. IN Lately this Far Eastern "Viagra" became popular in Europe.

However, even ancient authors knew that medicines could be prepared from seahorses. So, Pliny the Elder (24-79) wrote that in case of hair loss, one should use an ointment prepared from a mixture of dried seahorses, marjoram oil, resin and lard. In 1754, the English Gentlemen's Magazine advised breastfeeding mothers to take seahorse extract "for better milk flow." Certainly, old recipes may cause a smile, but spends the same now World Organization health research " healing properties seahorse."

Meanwhile, Amanda Vincent and a number of biologists are advocating a complete ban on the uncontrolled harvesting and trade of seahorses, trying to end predatory fishing, as whaling was done in its time. The situation is that in Asia, seahorses are caught mainly by poachers. To end this, the researcher created the Project Seahorse organization back in 1986, which is trying to protect seahorses in Vietnam, Hong Kong and the Philippines, as well as to establish a civilized trade in them. Things are especially successful on the Philippine island of Khandayan.

The inhabitants of the local village of Handumon have been harvesting seahorses for centuries. However, in just a decade, from 1985 to 1995, their catches dropped by almost 70 percent. Therefore, the seahorse rescue program proposed by Amanda Vincent was perhaps the only hope for the fishermen.

To begin with, it was decided to create a protected area with total area thirty-three hectares, where fishing was completely banned. There, all the seahorses were counted and even numbered, putting a collar on them. From time to time, divers looked into this water area and checked if the “lazy homebodies”, seahorses, had swum away from here.

Agreed that outside protected area will not catch males with full brood bags. If they were caught in the net, they were thrown back into the sea. In addition, environmentalists have tried to re-plant mangroves and underwater forests of algae - the natural shelters of these fish.

In some zoos - in Stuttgart, Berlin, Basel, as well as in the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the California Aquarium, the breeding of these fish is going well. Perhaps they can be saved.

In the seas surrounding Russia, there are only two species of seahorses (although the species diversity of seahorses is high, only different seas There are 32 species of seahorses in the world. These are the Black Sea seahorse and the Japanese seahorse. The first lives in Black and Seas of Azov, and the second in Japanese.

“Our” seahorses are small and do not have chic long outgrowths all over their bodies, like, for example, a rag-picker that lives in warm seas and masquerading as thickets of sargasso algae. Their carapace has a modest protective function: it is very strong and usually painted to match the color of the background.

As with many creatures that fill the seas, skies and land, there is no link for the seahorse that can connect it with any other form of life. Like all major types of living creatures, the complex seahorse was created suddenly, as the book of Genesis tells us.

Hello, my dear young readers and wise parents! In the category "Projects" new topic! ShkolaLa helps prepare a message about the seahorse. Whatever class you are in elementary school, a report about this inhabitant of the sea will be an indispensable highlight in the lesson of the world around. Read on and you'll understand why.

Lesson plan:

What kind of animal is a seahorse?

This aquatic inhabitant with an outstanding appearance by no means looks like a fish. In fact, it refers to fish family needle-shaped. Most of all, he looks like a chess piece, which is why he was probably so nicknamed.

The body is crocheted, the back is a hump, the abdomen is forward. Yes, and his head is that of a horse, and his mouth extended into a tube resembles a muzzle, and when he moves, he leans on a tail twisted into a ring.

Why not a horse in miniature!

This fish is also called a dragon, since many species really resemble this fairy tale character with their wings spread out to the sides, except that there are not three heads, but only one!

In total, there are up to 50 species of seahorses, the size of which can be up to 30 centimeters. But the smallest of them is dwarf, it is only 2 centimeters tall. Almost 30 species are listed in the Red Book.

This is interesting! Research scientists have proven that the closest relative of the seahorse is the needlefish, from which it separated as much as 23 million years ago! Today, numerous long spikes have been preserved from the progenitor of the fish.

Where can you see a seahorse? It lives in the tropics and subtropics. His home is a thicket of algae and Coral reefs Black Sea, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, the coasts of Australia, the Japanese Yellow Sea and the Russian Azov.

This is interesting! Seahorses are great at playing hide-and-seek and master the art of camouflage to perfection. They have special cells - chromatophores, which color the horse under its environment. At the same time, you can see the water chameleon only by the nose sticking out of the algae.

Most often, miniature horses are brown, yellowish or shades of green, but those that live among the corals are red and purple. Like a Christmas tree toy hang in sea ​​depths such skates, catching the tail on the plants.

How do seahorses swim?

It is difficult to call a seahorse a fish also because it does not swim like everyone else. His body is located vertically in the water. The swim bladder, which runs along the body, helps him maintain balance. It is divided into two parts: the head is larger than the abdominal, so the skate swims upright.

By changing the volume of gas in the bubble, the fish runs, rising up, and also plunging to the depth. If something happens to the skate's bubble, he has no choice but to lie still until he dies.

This is interesting! Dwarf representatives are the slowest fish in the world. They move, as they say, "a teaspoon per hour" - only one and a half meters in 60 minutes.

The tail of the fish is very flexible and without fins, its sea ​​Horse uses like an anchor, clinging to corals and plants. By the way, he can hug his girlfriend with them.

But it cannot row with its tail. To do this, there is a movable fin on the back and a pair of pectoral fins.

Given this structure, the seahorse swimmer is no good, and he strives to compete, spending most of his time in a hovering state, staring around.

What's on the Seahorse's Menu?

The water horse feeds on plankton - small crustaceans, which it hunts down, actively rotating its eyes. The tiny mouth of the fish is located at the end of the muzzle-tube.

As soon as the food approaches the little hunter, he puffs out his cheeks and, like a vacuum cleaner, strongly sucks the crustaceans.

This is interesting! These fish have no teeth or stomach. Their digestive organs are a direct-flow engine that constantly needs to be refueled.

Tiny horses can hang around waiting for food for up to 10 hours, they don’t even need to hunt much, sit in one place, and dinner floats by. Moreover, as we have already understood, he is no swimmer. So a lazy glutton eats up to 3.5 thousand crustaceans per day.

pregnant dads

Yes, we were not mistaken! This is just the only case when pregnancy is not a woman's business. In seahorses, males carry offspring! For this, the male has a bag on his abdomen that looks like a kangaroo, where eggs are laid.

Of these, after 40 days, up to 1,500 miniature seahorses appear.

This is interesting! The seahorse is the only fish that has a neck.

But a frivolous mother all these days visits a friend only in the morning, carelessly sailing away after five minutes of a date until the next day on her own business. Or maybe just forget about it!

Even after birth, dad takes care of the offspring: at the first danger, he gives them a signal, and they instantly hide securely in his bag.

Do seahorses have enemies?

Although the body of a seahorse is covered with a hard bony shell and spikes, and the fish is too tough for most, it can be a dinner for crabs or rays.

However, the biggest danger for him is a person. The unique appearance of the fish and its beneficial features became the reason for the mass catch.

Seahorses are caught for souvenirs, for preparing expensive oriental dishes and for medical purposes.

This is interesting! When searching for food, as well as for vigilance, these fish manage to look with both eyes at the same time in different directions. And their organs of vision can look like this: one forward, and the other to control what is happening behind.

They try to keep exotic seahorses in aquariums, but they do not adapt well to the artificial environment. If nothing threatens the fish, then it can live up to 5 years.

This is how we briefly talked about amazing creature with the body of a horse, kangaroo pouch, spinning chameleon eyes and prehensile monkey tail.

I hope you will interest the whole class with your story. And for clarity, print out photos of these exotic fish or, if possible, show them this video. Let the guys see that they are really unique.

See you soon on the ShkolaLa blog and in the Projects section

Success in your studies!

Evgenia Klimkovich

The 16th-century French naturalist Guillaume Rondele, one of the first to publish a fundamental work on marine fish, described the seahorse as a cross between insects and primitive coelenterates. No wonder, because this creature strikes with its unusual appearance. But modern scientists have come to the conclusion that seahorses are still fish. Indeed, they breathe through gills, have a swim bladder that allows them to control their buoyancy, and are able to spawn. But the seahorse is a very special fish, and how more people studies it, the more interesting facts he learns:

The seahorse is a fish, but it does not have scales. The bodies of these creatures are covered with rigid plates that form a kind of exoskeleton. This makes them unattractive prey for a number of predators. By the way, they also have an internal skeleton.


Seahorses are different sizes: tiny as a pine nut and as big as a banana. The largest members of this tribe belong to the species Hippocampus abdominalis, also known as the pot-bellied seahorse. They can reach 35 cm and live in the waters of South Australia and New Zealand. The smallest known species is called the seahorse. Satomi(Hippocampus satomiae), it was described by biologists in 2008. Its size is only one and a half centimeters, and the place of residence is the waters of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.


Today, there are about 54 species of seahorses around the world, although there is no consensus on their number yet. The identification of these animals is a very difficult task, because individuals of the same species can vary greatly in appearance. In addition, researchers continue to find new species.

Seahorses swim well. The pygmy seahorse holds the record for slowness, developing "fantastic" speed: 1.5 meters per hour. It is not surprising that skates spend most of the time standing "at anchor", that is, catching their flexible tail on something motionless.

But seahorses are avid hitchhikers. They can move long distances by clinging to floating algae and debris. This allows you to save energy, but during a storm, travelers are constantly at risk of being washed ashore along with their unreliable boats.


Seahorses move with the help of a small fin on their back, which flutters up to 35 times per second. The pectoral fins, which are even smaller in size, are located closer to the back of the head and serve purely for steering. These fish are very maneuverable: they can easily move up, down, forward and backward.

Seahorses have no teeth and no stomach. Food passes through them digestive system so fast that they have to eat almost continuously. These creatures are able to eat more 3000 microscopic crustaceans per day. Left without food, they can quickly die from exhaustion.

The graceful muzzles of these animals, thanks to which they got their name, act like a vacuum cleaner pipe. When prey swims nearby, the skate sharply sucks it up. If the prey is too large, the seahorse's mouth may expand slightly.


The eyes of seahorses operate independently of each other, allowing them to monitor the space around them without moving or betraying their presence. This means they can look forward and backward at the same time! This feature is very useful because these animals hunt by sight. And they are excellent.

These underwater inhabitants are specialists in disguise. Some species can change their body color to blend in with their surroundings, while others are already born indistinguishable from a coral sprig or seaweed fragment.

Seahorses can communicate with each other by making clicking or smacking sounds. Most often this occurs during meals and courtship.


Seahorses have a complex and lengthy courtship ritual. The male can seek the location of the female for several days. As if dancing, they copy each other's movements for several hours or intertwine their tails. Already established couples can "dance" every day, strengthening the bond with each other. Those types of skates that are able to change color use this opportunity during mating games.

Some types of seahorses are monogamous, while others only stay together during the mating season.

The most amazing feature these animals are theirs unique way breeding. The female spawns like an ordinary fish, but the eggs are placed in a special bag located on the front of the male's body. He fertilizes her and bears in his rounded belly. Dad's gestation period varies from 14 days to 4 weeks. The number of eggs can range from 50-150 for small species and up to 1500 for larger ones. Childbirth is accompanied by contractions and can last up to 12 hours.


Newborn seahorses look like miniature copies of their parents, do not need their help and immediately go to independent travel. For the first weeks of their life, they drift aimlessly along with plankton and are vulnerable to many predators. Fewer than one in a hundred escape the fate of being prey and reach maturity.

For many people, the seahorse is associated with south seas and hot countries, but these are not such pampered animals. They are found not only in the tropics, but also off the coast of Great Britain and Eastern Canada. Even in the Black and Azov Seas, where the water is not salty enough for most tropical fish, you can meet one of the species of seahorse.


The average lifespan of a seahorse is between 4 – 6 years. However, many species are endangered due to overfishing. In particular, more than 20 million skates are caught annually for the needs of traditional Chinese medicine. Other factors that negatively affect their numbers are ocean pollution and the degradation of coral reefs.

The seahorse looks more like a chess piece of a horse or a gargoyle from a Gothic cathedral than a fish. Unlike other fish, it swims vertically, moves its eyes freely as if, it does not have a tail in the usual sense of the word, but it has a neck unusual for underwater inhabitants ... In addition, the males of these strange fish themselves bear offspring - how can you not be curious about this phenomenon?


let me introduce myself

Seahorses (Hippocampus) are small fish, the average size which, depending on the species, ranges from 1.5 to 30 centimeters. They are found in tropical and subtropical seas, and inhabit warm shallow waters - thickets of algae and. Life expectancy up to 4-5 years.

evolutionary passport

The seahorse is a member of the needlefish family. The typical needlefish is also quite unusual and has an elongated body, a long tail without a fin and a tubular stigma. If you put this fish upright, bend its head and twist its tail in a spiral, you would get a seahorse. Scientists believe that this happened 25 million years ago, when skates separated into a separate genus. Most likely, this was a response to the occurrence of large areas of shallow water, which was caused by tectonic events of the past.

How does a seahorse swim?

The swim bladder of the fish is located along the entire body and is divided by a septum that separates head part from the rest of the body. At the same time, the head bladder is larger than the abdominal one, which provides the skate with a vertical position when swimming. The skate also moves in the water column, mainly vertically: by changing the volume of gas inside the swimming one, it sinks or rises.

The horse uses a long, flexible and finless tail as an anchor: with it it clings to ledges of corals or algae, it can also hug a girlfriend, but it is completely unsuitable for rowing. This role is partly taken over by a mobile dorsal fin, as well as paired pectoral fins, which, despite the name, are located on the sides of the body.

This carelessness of the seahorse is caused by its unwillingness to compete with someone in speed or swim against the current, because it avoids strong underwater currents and prefers familiar terrain to everything else. So most of the time the seahorse spends clinging to the coral or algae with its tail and carefully examining everything around.

What's on the menu?

Skates don’t particularly need to hunt: you sit in one place, and slowly swims past and asks for lunch yourself. The tubular mouth of the skate, so unlike the flapping fish mouth, works like a pipette: by moving the gill covers, the fish creates a thrust that can suck in a careless crustacean from a distance of up to 4 centimeters. In the oral cavity, the caught prey is filtered and sent to the throat, and the water drawn in with it is discharged through the gills. In general, their skate can be called a voracious predator: it is able to eat for 10 hours a day, eating up to 3600 crustaceans and shrimps.

Chameleon of the underwater kingdom

The horse does not know how to flee and is not poisonous, but it has a whole arsenal of tricks hidden away. To begin with, there are chromatophore cells in the skin of the fish, thanks to which they are so diversely colored and can change their color depending on the background. It is not easy to see an almost motionless fish of a bizarre shape: either it is hiding in the thickets, or slowly drifting under the very nose of a predator, like a fragment of algae.

The seahorse's unusual eyes help to keep track of the situation: they do not seem "fishy" at all, since they can move independently of each other. So one eye can keep an eye on potential prey, while the other eye can keep itself from becoming prey.But, on the other hand, there are not so many people who want to eat a seahorse in the sea.

Bone plates and spikes protruding from under the skin of a small fish make it not very tasty (and this is not counting the internal skeleton). Under this pile of thorns, there is quite a bit of edible food - after all, the skate does not need developed muscles (it hardly swims), nor a supply of fat (food is always available in abundance). Nevertheless, there are gourmets and skates - rays, large crabs and some other predators.

love-carrot

The only thing that can make a seahorse show agility and even dancing ability is mating games. Male seahorses outwardly differ little from females - except that they are slightly larger, and there is a special organ on the abdomen - a brood chamber, somewhat similar to a kangaroo bag. During the breeding season, the walls of this pocket swell, it becomes clearly visible and attracts the attention of females.

Having come close, the fish intertwine their tails and slowly walk up and down the sea “lawns”. In the process of courtship, the male can even change his color to match the body color of his girlfriend. Then the pair begin to click, tossing their heads and touching the spikes on the body with bone crowns. Finally, the female lays the eggs in the male's pocket, where they are immediately fertilized. Some types of skates put an end to their relationship on this, others remain together all their lives ...

Sea "colts"

The "pregnant" extreme father takes care of the offspring from two weeks to two months. The vascular tissue of the brood chamber actually performs the function of the placenta, supplying the eggs with oxygen and nutrients. And in total, the “fish daddy” can carry more than a thousand babies in his pocket.The fry are born with a characteristic body shape and ready for independent life, but they are still able to straighten up, clearly demonstrating a direct relationship with the common needlefish. The male continues to take care of the offspring even after birth: in case of danger, at his signal, the fry hide the brood pouch.

What threatens the seahorse?

Recently, exotic fish has been subjected to intensive fishing, and almost all species of skates known today are listed in the international Red Book in the status of "vulnerable" and "threatened". They are used in traditional medicine Asia, sold to lovers of unusual aquarium animals or served as a delicacy for $ 800 per serving. In addition, their populations are affected by pollution of the seas and the destruction of coral reefs due to global warming.