Males sometimes fight for a female's attention by tail wrestling. Seahorse Diet and Habitat The curious lifestyle and adorable look of seahorses make them ideal fish for large displays at aquariums and zoos. Seahorses live in warm water near coasts around the world. They like shallow water because there are lots of plants to hold onto.
Seahorses typically live in coral reefs, mangroves, or seagrass meadows. They stay within a few yards of their homes for their entire lives. Although they are small and seemingly harmless, seahorses are carnivores. A seahorse can eat up to 3, brine shrimp each day. Seahorses eat by sucking food through their snout like a vacuum. Family Life and Reproduction Researchers have spent decades discovering the peculiar way seahorses mate and live.
A group of seahorses is called a herd. A baby seahorse is also known as a fry. Each seahorse chooses one mate and stays with that mate for its entire life.
Although seahorses choose a mate for life, the mates live in separate territories and meet up every morning to perform a ritual dance. The male seahorse carries eggs in a pouch on the front of his body until the eggs are ready to hatch.
One male seahorse can hatch thousands of babies at once. Seahorse eggs take 45 days to hatch. Newborn seahorses connect to each other using their tails. This helps them survive in open water. Once a baby seahorse hatches, it must survive without help from the parents.
Seahorse Size and Appearance Seahorses may be small and strange in appearance, but the way they look helps them survive in the dangerous oceans. A seahorse can be as small as half an inch long or as tall as 14 inches. Seahorses swim in an upright position, unlike other fish, who face horizontally. A fin on the back of the seahorse's head helps it move forward by fluttering at a speed of 35 times per second. The pectoral fin also helps it move in different directions.
Seahorses move in different directions using tiny pectoral fins on the back of their heads. Seahorses have curly tails that help them hold on to underwater plants, so they can catch food or preserve energy in rough waters.
The swim bladder is an air pocket inside the seahorse's body. Seahorses can change colour very quickly and match any surroundings in which it finds itself. They have even been known to turn bright red to match floating debris.
Both males and females also change colour during their courtship display. Unlike most other fish, seahorses have an exo-skeleton. Their bodies are made up of hard, external, bony plates that are fused together with a fleshy covering.
They do not have scales. Seahorses are poor swimmers. They rely on their dorsal fin beating at times per second to propel it along. Pectoral fins either side of the head help with stability and steering.
Seahorses live in shallow weedy areas especially eel grass beds. In winter they move into deeper waters to escape the rough weather. Seahorses are under threat worldwide for three main reasons: The Traditional Chinese Medicine Trade takes in excess of up to million seahorses a year from the wild and these are used for all types of medicine. The Curio Trade takes approximately one million seahorses from the wild.
Along with shells and starfish; they are deliberately taken from the sea and left to die in the boiling sun. They are then sold as souvenirs, a sad and sorrowful reminder of once beautiful creatures.
The pet trade takes an estimated one million seahorses from the wild and It is thought that less than 1, survive more than six weeks. There are about 54 species of seahorses worldwide, and possibly as many sub-species. It is often difficult for scientists to identify seahorses because individuals of the same species can vary greatly in appearance. New species continue to be found. The Seahorse Trust was set up in as an umbrella organisation to preserve and conserve the natural world, especially the marine environment using Seahorses as our flagship species.
We work in partnership through a Seahorse Alliance with many organisations and people from all over the world and it is this unique partnership that allows us to achieve so much in the conservation of seahorses and their environment for the future. E-mail: theseahorsetrust gmail. Seahorses make a clicking sound while eating that they also make when communicating with other seahorses. Dwindling sea grass, and disappearing coral reefs all affect seahorses, as well as other marine animals.
Male seahorses do carry their young through gestation. No one knows exactly why this happens. Some scientists think that it has something to do with population. Seahorses rarely make it to adulthood.
This is why the average amount of eggs per hatching ranges between — The male seahorse pushes the babies, known as fry, out of his stomach. The fry drift off, and are often eaten, or float into unfavorable waters. Seahorses have a very low survival rate in home aquariums. The environment required for seahorse survival is very unique. There are organisations set up to protect seahorses and to tell people more about them.
One of these is The Seahorse Trust. Love natural history?
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