They are tiny fish that have a head looks like the head of a horse. Well, you guessed it.
They are Seahorses - One of the most interesting living creature.
Today, we will learn everything about them.
My name is Michael.
And welcome everybody to Info School.
Seahorses are fish.
They live in water, breathe through gills and have a swim bladder.
However, they do not have caudal fins and have a long snake-like tail.
They also have a neck and a snout that points down.
Although they are bony fish,
they do not have scales, but rather thin skin stretched over a series of bony plates,
which are arranged in rings throughout their bodies.
Each species has a distinct number of rings.
The armor of bony plates also protects them against predators,
and because of this outer skeleton, they no longer have ribs.
Seahorse have a dorsal fin located on the lower body and pectoral fins located on the head near their gills.
Some species of seahorse are partly transparent, and are often not spotted in aquariums
despite being there and are also not often seen in pictures.
Seahorses range in size from 1.5 to 35.5 cm
(0.6 to 14.0 inch).
They are usually around 7 ounces to 1 pound in weight.
Seahorses are poor swimmers and generally swim in an upright position.
They propel themselves by using a small fin on their back that flutters up to 35 times per second,
and anchor themselves with their tails to seagrasses and corals.
The slowest-moving fish in the world is H. zosterae (the dwarf seahorse),
with a top speed of about 5 ft (1.5 m) per hour.
There are around 40 seahorse species, which are found in many bodies of water around the world.
They prefer locations that are shallow, warm, and tropical in nature.
Mostly in seas of Southeast Asia, North Africa and Pacific waters from North America to South America.
Like chameleons, seahorses can change color
so they match their surroundings in the seagrass.
This camouflage protects them from predators such as crabs.
With their bony armor,
there are very few animals that can eat them anyway.
Seahorses use snouts to probe into nooks and crannies for food.
When they find food
they suck it up through their snouts like a vacuum cleaner.
Their snouts can expand if their prey Is larger than the snout.
They are not able to chew and have to disintegrate the food as they eat it.
Their food is tiny plankton and fish larvae.
An adult eats 30-50 times and up to 3000 plankton a day.
Seahorses have excellent eyesight and their eyes are able to work independently on either side of their head.
This means they can look forwards and backwards at the same time!
This is particularly useful as they hunt for food by sight.
The male seahorse is the only creature where the male has a true reversed pregnancy.
They are considered to be monogamous species with pairs mating for life.
The male seahorse is equipped with a pouch on the ventral, or front-facing, side of the tail.
When mating, the female seahorse deposits up to 1,500 eggs in the male's pouch.
The male carries the eggs for 9 to 45 days until the seahorses emerge fully developed, but very small.
The young are then released into the water.
They are known as fry,
when they are born they are on their own.
They spend the first two to three weeks of their lives drifting along in the plankton layer of the ocean.
Less than one in a thousand will survive long enough to become an adult due to predators.
Seahorses are in danger of becoming extinct because of human activity.
They are used as food, aquarium pets, souvenirs and in traditional medicine in Asia.
Here are some tips for us to save the seahorses:
Don't buy dead seahorses and seahorse medicines.
If you want to keep seahorses as pets,
buy live seahorses that were bred in captivity instead of taking from the wild.
Protect the seahorses' world.
Stamp out destructive fishing.
Take a stand against climate change.
Go see the seahorses and go dive for seahorses.
Thank you for staying with us today.
Hope you enjoy learning about seahorses.
Feel free to share your thought in the comments section below
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