The seahorse, while a fish, doesn’t exactly look or act like one.
They have a prehensile tail that can grab vegetation, a tube-shaped mouth for sucking
up food, and when they have sex, it’s the male that gets pregnant.
While male pregnancy in seahorses is fairly unique in the animal kingdom, their mating
ritual might sound familiar.
They like to break the ice, by doing some dancing.
Seahorses will dance with each other for days, wrapping their tails around one another,
and even changing colors in the process.
This allows the couple to reinforce their bond and assess one another’s reproductive ability.
It also might help synchronize their movements for what comes next.
The reproductive role-reversal is made possible in part by the male’s brood pouch.
The male will extend this pouch to impress his dance partner.
The female seahorse will then deposit her eggs into the pouch using a protrusion from
the bottom of her torso called an ovipositor.
Once the eggs are with the male, he will fertilize them with his sperm, ensuring that he is,
in fact, the father.
His work isn’t done there, however.
The brood pouch is more than just a flap of skin to hold eggs in.
During pregnancy, the male seahorse keeps blood flowing around the embryos, controls
the salinity of the environment, and provides oxygen and nutrition to offspring.
When it’s time to birth his young, the male seahorse expels the newborn seahorses from
his pouch using muscle contractions.
There can be as many as 2,000 offspring, known “fry”, but many don’t make it to adulthood.
Newborn seahorses are left on their own once out of the brood pouch, and most die from
predators or being whisked away by ocean currents.
Less than 5 in every thousand will survive.
Meanwhile, the parents are right back to their mating ritual.
While the male seahorse has been busy being Mr. Mom,
there are female seahorses with more eggs that are ready to be deposited.
Some male seahorses can give birth in the morning and be pregnant by the end of the day.
Back to the dance floor, Mr. Seahorse.
Back to the dance floor.
For more videos about animal dads, check out this playlist from our friends at the Dodo.
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