General Manager: Juan Contreras
Author and Producer: Nicole Maxhimer
Found in the shallow saltwater habitats are the small, tea-cup sized fish, seahorses.
What a time we live in, right? Welcome to one of the first 30 Seconds of Science quarantine blogs! We’re sad that it has come to this but we on 300 Seconds of Science and Five Minute Flashback are excited to continue creating content and teaching our audience.
Scientifically called Hippocampus, seahorses live in a grouping called a herd and can range in size from 0.6 to 14 inches long. These poor swimmers have an exo-skeleton, unlike most fish. Instead of scales, they have bony plates that are fused together with a fleshy covering. Eating up to 50 times a day seahorses eat small crustaceans such as shrimp and plankton. This makes them carnivores!
Did you know that male seahorses are the ones that give birth? Usually, in reproduction it is the female who fertilizes the egg, but for seahorses, the female transfers her eggs to the male's pouch, where self-fertilization occurs. Seahorses mate for life, how loyal! Their mating ritual includes spiraling around each other and different objects somewhat like a dance.
Seahorses are the only creature that has a reversed pregnancy and during their gestation period, which can last from two to four weeks, the male will carry 50 to 2,000 eggs in their pouch, depending on the size of the species. The birth of baby seahorses, also called “fry” can take up to 12 hours.
To see a Seahorse birth watch the video "Watch a Seahorse Give Birth to 2,000 Babies | National Geographic"
After the birth of the fry, they are then on their own, floating amongst plankton and surviving without the care from their parents. While seahorses usually only live between one to five years, because of predators, only one out of a thousand babies will survive long enough to become adults. Seahorses are also threatened by commercial and medical use. Traditional Chinese Medicine uses up to 150 Million seahorses a year from the wild. Commercially seahorses are sold as souvenirs and used in the pet trade.
If you want to learn more about seahorses watch the video "Seahorse | Amazing Animals"
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Courtesy of:
National Geographic. (2018, September 24). Seahorses. Retrieved April 7, 2020, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/group/seahorses/
Seahorse Mating Dance - The Great British Year: Episode 2 Preview - Bbc One. (2013). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/oa3lt7ewW9U
Seahorse | Amazing Animals. (2016). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/XqP0xqbnAMU
The Seahorse Trust. (2020). Seahorse Facts. Retrieved April 7, 2020, from https://www.theseahorsetrust.org/seahorse-facts/
Watch a Seahorse Give Birth to 2,000 Babies | National Geographic. (2016). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/b_nEA3dtOZs
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Nicole Maxhimer
Communications: Media Studies Major
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