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 is Hippocampus zosterae (dwarf sea ​​horse j) is found in the Gulf of Mexico. Its length does not exceed four centimeters, and the body is very hardy.

In the Black and Mediterranean Seas, you can meet the long-snouted, 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 Sea Horses 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 there are. seahorses. 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 take care of 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 keeps on a plot 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 the natural habitat of seahorses.

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 seahorses caught - 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, for example, with the bark of trees, drugs are prepared that are just as popular in Japan, Korea, China as we do - 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 on the "healing properties of the 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 a total area of ​​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.

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

Since then, the number of seahorses and other fish in the vicinity of Khandumon has stabilized. Especially a lot of seahorses inhabit the protected area. In turn, in other Philippine villages, making sure that the neighbors are doing well, they also follow this example. Three more protected areas where seahorses are bred.

They are also grown on special farms. However, there are problems here. So, scientists do not yet know what diet is best for seahorses.

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.

The intention of the Creator is clearly and clearly manifested in the seahorse. But the fossil record presents another problem for those who believe in evolution. To defend the idea that the sea horse is the product of evolution over millions of years, proponents of this theory need fossils showing gradual development lower form animal life in more complex shape seahorse. But much to the chagrin of evolutionists, “no fossilized seahorses have been discovered.”

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.

The seahorse is an amazing and unusual representative of tropical waters. His appearance and some features of life differ from representatives marine environment. Among connoisseurs of such individuals, the question is common: a seahorse is a fish or an animal. The answer to it is simple - the individual belongs to the animal kingdom and the class of ray-finned fish. After many years of research, scientists have proven that the animal is a close relative of the needlefish.

The seahorse belongs to the animal kingdom and the class of ray-finned fish.

General information

Since the animal is considered a highly modified species of pipefish, it belongs to the order Needle-shaped. The unusual body of the skate really resembles a piece in chess. Perhaps this was the reason for giving the animal such a name.

IN natural environment you can meet the skate in subtropical and tropical waters around the world. Salty and maximum pure water - best condition for his comfortable stay. The size of the seahorse is small and ranges from 2 to 30-32 cm. It is quite rare to find individuals that reach 35 cm in length.

There are many theories about where the seahorse lives, since it was met in different corners planets. Most often, the animal can be found in the waters of Australia, sometimes England. Sometimes individual species are found in the Azov and Black Seas. It prefers to stay close to the bottom and uses algae as cover, camouflaging themselves in their thickets and changing color according to what color they are.


The seahorse prefers to be at the bottom of the reservoir and hide in the algae.

The body of the fish is covered with a very hard and bony shell. which protects against the negative effects of the environment. Often there are thorns on the body different lengths and forms, some covered with long ribbon-like processes different color. Surprisingly, this fish does not have scales. The head will become a feature of the structure, since it is very firmly attached to the body and does not turn. If the skate wants to look back, he turns his whole body or bulges his eyes.

Each eye moves separately from the other. This feature is also inherent in chameleons, which can rotate each eye separately in a circle. There is debate about how long seahorses live, as they usually live up to 4 years, but in some cases you can find representatives who live up to 6 years.

Another feature of the fish is its vertical position in the water. This is possible due to the fact that the swim bladder is divided into two sections by a thin septum and allows you to maintain a vertical position.

Popular types

There are about 50 species of seahorses in their natural habitat. Each of them differs in size, appearance and some features of the structure. The most common are the following:


In southern Japan, dwarf individuals can be found. They are painted in light colors with purple stripes or spots. Perfectly disguised as corals. They have a body length of no more than 3 cm. They prefer not to descend to a depth of more than 40 meters.

Nutrition Features

Amazing fish are one of the few species that are not hunted by other inhabitants sea ​​depths. It's all about the structure of individuals, which is dominated by spikes and bone plates. Such food is not able to digest large predatory fish or other hunters. The only one who can eat a skate is a sand crab, whose stomach is able to digest what they eat.

The skates themselves feed on plankton.

The favorite delicacy of these unusual fish is crayfish cubs and other small fish. Thanks to the amazing ability of the skate to disguise itself and remain motionless for several hours, it successfully hunts them. It waits for the moment when the victim approaches and draws it along with water into its mouth.


Seahorses do not have a stomach. Therefore they are very greedy.

Despite their small size, seahorses are very voracious and are capable of hunting and eating up to 10 hours a day. a large number of small individuals. This is due to the fact that individuals do not have a stomach, so food passes through all departments rather quickly. digestive system. If you keep them in captivity, There are a few feeding rules to follow:

  • Captive-bred individuals are capable of feeding on dead daphnia, shrimp, and other small individuals, as well as dry fish food.
  • The food must be fresh.
  • Individuals should be fed regularly, but overeating should not be allowed, since in captivity this can cause a variety of diseases.

It is allowed to install a variety of feeders in which food is placed. A few days after the installation of such an innovation, the individuals themselves will understand that this is a new place for eating. Near the feeders, several long rods or sticks should be installed so that the skates can cling to them while eating.

seahorse breeding

Unusual fish lead a sedentary lifestyle and are in one place almost all the time. In case of danger, they can develop a decent speed or attach to big fish to take them to a safer place.

The fish is loyal and throughout life prefers to be close to one partner. Only in rare cases does a female or male change a life partner. The most incredible will be the fact that in a married couple, the male bears the offspring. After the start of spawning, the couple performs a certain mating dance for a long time. After that, the female transfers the eggs to a special pocket, which is located on the male's belly.

After 2 weeks of gestation, fry come out of the pocket, which are already independent and immediately set off for free swimming. Different kinds Pipits are distinguished by their fecundity and can lay from 5 to 2000 eggs at a time.

Breeding skates in captivity is quite difficult and an aquarium hobbyist will not be able to handle it. Despite the fact that individuals are quite popular among aquarists, keeping them in an artificial environment has many nuances. If the conditions are not met, they begin to get sick and die.

Currently, seahorses of various species are on the verge of extinction. This is due to the fact that in many countries the fish is an expensive delicacy, and it is caught on an industrial scale. In some regions of Australia and Asia, skates are used as a raw material for the preparation of various ointments and medicines.

ABOUT healing properties this meat amazing fish mankind has known since antiquity and included it in many dishes. However, then amateur fishing could not significantly reduce the number of individuals. Now the catch has become a real problem, as it gradually leads to the complete disappearance of the species.

The seahorse is an unusual animal resembling a small magic horse ranging in size from 1.5 to 30 centimeters. It has family ties with needle fish. An inhabitant of salty tropical waters is also found off the coast of Eastern Canada and Great Britain. Some species exist in fresh waters. The sea dweller is of constant interest to children and adults.

Appearance

Sea Horse - Interesting Facts for children about appearance. The movement involves a small fin on the back, oscillating up to 35 times per second. Rowing with two gill fins maintains vertical balance. They are weak swimmers, some dwarf species move at a speed of one and a half meters per hour. Spiraling up and down provides a change in the volume of the swim bladder.

They are able to change color depending on the surrounding plants, therefore they are invisible in aquatic environment. The body is covered with bony armor instead of scales. as if tropical birds, have a rich color palette with stripes and specks. They are difficult to distinguish from corals.

Observation is carried out by a pair of eyes that can look in opposite directions.

Beautiful representatives of fish breathe with the help of gills, have a swim bladder located throughout the body, which makes it possible to vertically position themselves in the water.

A peculiar tail helps to attach to the fins and make long journeys “on horseback” on other fish.

Behavior

Interesting Seahorse Facts - Behavior. Due to the peculiarities of the digestive system, they need constant nutrition, which enters the body with water. Food is not only plankton, crustaceans, shrimps, larvae, but also small fish. There are no teeth and stomach, absorption occurs through the proboscis. They do not chase prey, but patiently wait for it to swim by itself, so a small current is needed for a comfortable life.

Life expectancy is limited to 4-5 years, but they manage to leave a million offspring.

They don't do well in aquariums. The reason is an unusual environment, susceptibility to stress. They need a lot of small living creatures for food: more than 3 thousand crustaceans and shrimps per day. Without food, they quickly die from exhaustion.

The female transfers the eggs from her body to a special bag to the male. Thus, males carry offspring for 1.5 months. This is one of the few species when dad is worn with a child. The number of fry ranges from 1600 to 2, depending on the species. Born cubs immediately go on an independent journey.

The main enemies of the skate are crabs, penguins, rays and other hungry predators. Almost the entire body is made up of bones, scales, and spines. Few want to feast on such prey.

Red Book

For several years, the unique fish has been a symbol sea ​​power Northern Fleet. It was displayed on the emblem of Zaozersk, a city in the Murmansk region. Then the image of the skate was replaced with a dolphin.

In the coastal waters of Russia, there are 2 species of fish that live in the Black, Azov and Japanese Seas.

The Red Book lists 30 species of animals out of 32. Their habitats are still being polluted, and numerous jellyfish destroy their nutrient plankton. The reason for the mass capture is a beautiful appearance.

One out of a hundred fry is able to grow to maturity. The causes of extinction are related to economic activity of people. Fish are caught by the Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians for pseudo-medical purposes (of course, these creatures cannot cure anyone) and making souvenirs from dried exhibits.

Seahorse liver and eyes are considered a healthy delicacy and are served in expensive restaurants. Fried skates on sticks offer Chinese cuisine.

The breeding of these creatures is successfully carried out in the zoos of Berlin, Stuttgart, Basel, in the California and the National Aquarium of Baltimore.

Black Sea sea ​​Horse is an indigenous inhabitant of the Black Sea, having formed into a separate species about 20 million years ago. Nature rewarded him with an original appearance, and in the course of evolution, unique opportunities and skills inaccessible to other inhabitants underwater world. Human actions have put skates on the brink of extinction, forcing biologists to add them to the Red Book.

Description

In biological encyclopedias, the Black Sea seahorse is named Hippocampus guttulatus (long-snouted seahorse) and belongs to the class of ray-finned fish. Its upper part is similar to a chess "horse", and the elongated tubular mouth-pump (one third of the length of the head) only enhances the resemblance. The head is located perpendicular to the body and can move up / down, which other types of fish are not able to do. The eyes work independently of each other, and the viewing angle reaches 300 degrees.

The body of the seahorse is elongated and slightly flattened laterally and is constantly in an upright position due to a double air bladder, the upper section of which is smaller than the lower one. It ends with a long and flexible tail without a blade-fin, capable of curling into a ring. They skates cling to algae, hiding from danger or attacking prey from an ambush.

Sea Horse
Photo: http://zapcity.fr

For protective purposes, the body of the seahorse is covered with horny plates, spikes of various lengths and growths, which serve as an additional means of camouflage in thickets of algae. The shell is of high strength and does not lose its properties even after drying. Having a brownish-yellow color with small white dots, they are able to change color, adjusting to the environment.

Seahorses swim vertically and not very fast, making up to 70 “strokes” per second with their dorsal fin, helping themselves with oscillatory movements of the body and tail. Under the head there are two more small fins, corresponding in their functions to the pectoral fins of fish of "standard" forms.

Male seahorses are usually larger and grow up to 20-21 centimeters, females up to 17-18. The usual life expectancy does not exceed 4-5 years.

Habitat and food

The seahorse lives in the waters of the Black, Azov and mediterranean sea, off the eastern coast Atlantic Ocean, from the Netherlands to the African coast. It chooses places with a depth of up to 20 meters, with the obligatory presence of underwater vegetation, where it spends about 90% of its life, setting up ambushes and hiding from predators. Prefers water without strong currents.

They mostly live in small groups of 3-5 individuals, almost never gathering in large quantities. But they can also create couples for life, especially when living in artificial conditions aquariums. At the same time, if one of the partners dies, the second mourns very much, which is noticeable by the change in behavior, and may also die.


"Seed pair" of seahorses
Photo: https://c2.staticflickr.com

The seahorse feeds with the help of a mouth-pump, drawing food along with water at great speed, from distances up to 4 centimeters. He eats small bottom inhabitants of the sea, crustaceans, fish fry, plankton, which he catches from ambush in algae. It is worth noting the appetite of animals that “lunch” at least 5 times a day and are able to do this up to 10 hours a day.

An interesting fact: in seahorses, males, not females, bear and give birth to offspring.

Spawning

Unlike most animals, males are responsible for the reproduction of seahorses, who bear and “feed” the eggs, give birth to offspring. At the same time, the females carefully choose the future father, and their mating dances may last 3 days. At this time, the skates swim in shallow water (up to 4 meters), swim together, periodically rising to the surface, exchange songs from click sounds, and even “kiss”, touching their pump mouths.


Seahorse in the waters of the Black Sea
Photo: wikimedia.org

When the prelude ends, the female lays eggs (depending on size, from 10 to 650 eggs). For this, at the bottom abdominal cavity the male is provided with an egg bag-pocket penetrated by the circulatory system to supply oxygen to the developing larvae. After filling (sometimes the pipit accepts eggs from several females), its seam closes and overgrows, and the “father” carries out internal fertilization of the eggs.

The gestation of eggs takes about 4-5 weeks. All this time, the seahorse is in shallow water, without leaving square meter his "personal" area, where he hunts and hides. This is his territory, where even “frivolous” females leave to provide the “nursing father” with enough food.

After the formation of fry, completely ready for independent life, difficult childbirth begins - the male can wriggle up to 2 days, trying to open the birth bag. Sometimes it ends with his death. If everything went well, the little skates crawl out of the pocket and rise to the surface for a breath of air (to fill the air bubble), then return to the "daddy". For some time they live next to him, hiding in a "bag" in case of danger, but soon they swim away and never return.

Use of seahorses

Seahorses are used by man in several areas, one of which is aesthetic in nature. Vacationers willingly buy these original species of animals for souvenirs. Black Sea coast, or try to "domesticate" them by planting them in an aquarium. In the second case, death is also almost inevitable, since skates do not tolerate changes well, especially if their “half” is left in the sea.


Sea Horse

Another area in which seahorses are widely used is ethnoscience especially among the peoples of Asia. According to traditional healers, drugs from animals help in the treatment of baldness, skin diseases, atherosclerosis, cough and asthma. Especially popular means in the treatment of impotence and disorders of sexual functions. The ability to bind harmful carcinogens in the human body and toxic substances which helps in the prevention of cancer.

The pygmy seahorse is one of about fifty species of the seahorse genus, which is bony fish small family sea ​​games(a detachment of needle-shaped).

Appearance of a pygmy seahorse

Like other seahorses, dwarf relatives are similar in shape to a chess horse figure.

Many tape-like leathery outgrowths and long spikes that are located on its body make the pygmy seahorse extremely invisible in the algae.

Among the marine vegetation, he, as a rule, lives, being practically inaccessible to predators. And if the dimensions certain types seahorses can reach thirty centimeters, the pygmy seahorse does not exceed four centimeters in length.

Its body is not covered with scales, like most fish, but with bony plates. However, despite the fact that his carapace is quite heavy, he moves quite easily, although not too fast. In appearance, the word floats in the water, shimmering with different colors from bluish-blue to orange, from fiery red to lemon yellow, from brown to black. Given the brightness of the colors, the seahorse can rightfully be called a parrot of the deep sea.

Habitat of the pygmy seahorse

All seahorses prefer tropical and subtropical waters, and the pygmy seahorse is no exception here, and lives in warm waters Gulf of Mexico. Prefers to choose calm places, avoiding turbulent currents. The lifestyle of a seahorse is characterized by low mobility.

Usually they, using their flexible tail, attach themselves to the stems of algae and, changing the color of the body, completely merge with environment. With this camouflage method, the pygmy seahorse hunts for food and hides from enemies. As food, the pygmy seahorse mainly uses small crustaceans. The tubular stigma acts like a pump, drawing prey along with water.

Contrary to popular belief that the body shape of a seahorse resembles an "S" shape, this is not true. This shape is artificially given to seahorses by manufacturers of seahorse souvenirs. In fact, the hook of the seahorse's tail is bent towards the stomach. It should be noted that the closest relatives of seahorses (needlefish and stickleback) look completely ordinary.


The anatomical structure of the seahorse

The body of a pygmy seahorse is arranged in a vertical view. The reason for this is the specific structure of the swim bladder, which is located along the body along almost its entire length and is divided by a septum that separates head part swim bladder from the rest of the body. And because the cephalic swim bladder is larger than the ventral one, this provides the pygmy seahorse with an upright swimming position.

Origin of the pygmy seahorse

Studies show that the pygmy seahorse is a highly modified needlefish. Unfortunately, no fossilized remains of the pygmy seahorse have been found. However, the insufficient number of fossilized remains is common problem all seahorses, the oldest specimens of which have been found in small numbers on the territory of Slovenia, and whose age is estimated at thirteen million years.


Reproduction of pygmy seahorses

The reproduction of pygmy seahorses differs from the reproduction of other animals. When it comes mating season, the male swims up to the female and both skates are pressed against each other. The male at this time opens his pocket wide, and the female throws in a few eggs. The male is engaged in bearing offspring.

Pygmy seahorses are fertile enough to be expected to carry up to a hundred embryos in a male's pouch. Pygmy seahorses are guided by ebb and flow, due to the fact that fry can be carried away by a strong sea current. During the breeding season, pygmy seahorse fry hatch every four weeks. They are given to themselves immediately after birth. The lifespan of these seahorses is about four years.

Behavior of the pygmy seahorse

Pygmy seahorses swim very slowly. However, despite this, they are successful hunters. Almost every pygmy seahorse hunt is successful. And despite the extremely low speed movement, the pygmy seahorse is able to grab prey floating several times faster.


The favorite dish of the pygmy seahorse is crustaceans. However, these crustaceans are able to swim away at great speed, as soon as they feel the excitement of the water near them. It should be noted that their speed corresponds to five hundred lengths of their body every second. If a person were able to move at such a speed, he would develop a speed of 3200 km / h in water. And only seahorses are able to deceive the ultra-fast copepods. Hunting for them ends for the seahorse with success in 90% of cases.

Holographic observations of pygmy seahorses have shown that the pygmy seahorse's head has a special shape that allows it to keep waves to a minimum during mouth opening.

The pygmy seahorse, attacking its prey, tilts its head at the same angle as its prey. As a result, the waves do not have time to reach the crustacean and it does not have time to swim away.

Observations have also shown that in other inhabitants of the deep sea, which are distinguished by a more blunt head shape, hunting for copepods is far from being so successful.


Apparently, it was precisely the attempts to keep up with the nimble and fast copepods that caused the seahorse's head to acquire a characteristic shape in the process of evolution. It was this anatomical property that made seahorses perhaps the most successful hunters in the ocean.

The method of feeding the pygmy seahorse among scientists is called "rotary feeding", in which the animal quickly rotates its head in an upward direction, drags the prey and then, from a distance of one millimeter, suck it in with its mouth.

All this takes a pygmy seahorse less than one millisecond. In most cases, a copepod can swim to a safe distance in two or three milliseconds, which makes them faster than the bulk of predators, but not faster than a seahorse.

Decline in pygmy seahorse numbers

Seahorses as a whole are currently on the verge of extinction, and their population is declining at a rapid pace.


Almost all species of seahorses known to science are already listed in the Red Book. There are many reasons for this sad state of affairs, but more large species seahorses suffer, among other things, due to the mass capture of these fish in the waters of the Philippines, Australia, Malaysia and Thailand.