The Faithful Wanderer

The First Surprising Thing about Seahorses

I love studying the weird beasties underneath the sea and one of the strangest on planet Earth is the seahorse. So today, I’m going to tell you all about the biology of these very unusual creatures.

First of all, seahorses are classified as a fish. Why? Because they breath through gills and have a swim bladder just like other fish.

Unusual Facts about Seahorses

1. A very small pectoral fin on the seahorse’s back propels them through the water, but they are very poor swimmers.
2. Their outer shell is made up of bony plates and this natural armor makes seahorses a little hard to digest.
3. Crabs apparently find them very tasty.
4. Humans deplete the population by harvesting seahorses for aquariums.
5. There are 47 different seahorse species.
6. The Australian Big Bellied Seahorse is about a foot in height.
7. Several species of pigmy seahorses live in the ocean near Indonesia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea
8. Pigmy seahorses are less than an inch high.
9. Like chameleons, a seahorse’s eyes move independently; they can also change color to blend in with surrounding plants and corals.

Mating and Reproduction

1. Seahorses are monogamous. They remain with one partner and reproduce several times during each yearly mating season.
2. Couples greet each other each day with a ritualistic dance, which strengthens the bond between them.
3. A mated pair will sometimes link their tails together,
4. Like seadragons and pipefish—which are close relatives—the male seahorse experiences pregnancy instead of the female.
5. A female deposits her eggs in the male’s brood pooch, where they are fertilized.
6. Embryos are nourished with oxygen and food, while growing inside the male.
7. The mothers deposit between 50 – 1500 eggs, depending on the species size.
8. Gestation, depending on the species size, takes between 14 days to about a month.
9. At the time of birth, the male experiences contractions and expels the tiny, fully-formed independent seahorses into the surrounding sea water.
10. Researchers estimate only 0.5% will reach adulthood.

Seahorses wrap their tail around seagrass, coral or anything else to stay anchored within their chosen habitat. They can also hitch rides by wrapping their tails around seaweed, or other things. There’s a famous image of a seahorse that mistakenly wrapped it’s tail around a Q-tip, floating nearby. He was suddenly floating in the ocean with little cover, surrounded by trash and subject to the Indonesian tides.

Seahorse Q-tip image.

My Spiritual Point

At this moment, what are you anchored to? What gives you peace, comfort and reassurance? As human beings, we like to cling to anything other than God. But Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian put it best.

Let’s both seek to be anchored in Jesus Christ, because everything else we value can be taken away.

These images were downloaded from Pixabay.com.

Resources:

Here’s a link to the famous Q-tip image.