Fascinating Facts on the Seahorses

• Seahorses are fish.
• They have a swim bladder for buoyancy, gills to breathe, and fins to help them swim
• They can swim in pairs with their tails linked together
• This type of swimming is characteristic for seahorses.
• They swim upright and avoid predators by mimicking the colour and shape of underwater plants.
• A master of camouflage, these fab fish can be incredibly difficult to spot. Camouflage not only helps the seahorse avoid predators, such as crabs and other fish, it helps it to be a predator, too.
• They are difficult to digest, so they have few predators in the sea, mostly some crustaceans. The biggest danger comes from humans because they are hunting them.
• Seahorses move each of its eyes independently
• The seahorse feeds constantly on plankton and tiny fish. It moves each of its eyes independently, so it can follow the activity of passing sea life without giving its presence away. Feeding on small crustaceans, seahorses are super-skilled ambush predators. Rather than chasing their food, they wait, unnoticed, for prey to pass by. They then suck their unsuspecting victim though their tube-like mouth, before swallowing it whole.
• They have no teeth and scales like other fish but only an exoskeleton
• Food passes through their digestive systems so quickly, they must eat almost constantly to stay alive. They can consume 3,000 or more brine shrimp per day.
• They are one of the few animal species where the male bears unborn young
• Seahorses are monogamous and mate for life. Rarer still, they are among the only animal species on Earth in which the Male bears the unborn young. Male pregnancy frees to female to make more eggs straight away and so reproduce quicker. When mating, the female seahorse releases up to 50 eggs into a pouch on the male’s abdomen. The male seahorse carries the eggs in his pouch until they hatch, then releases fully formed, miniature seahorses into the water.  As little as 5 or as many as 1,500 young can be born.

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