Facts about Seahorses
Seahorses gained international protection on May 15, 2004. What do South American Spider Monkeys, Ringtail Opossums and seahorses have in common? They all have prehensile tails. Seahorses are members of the Teleost suborder, or bony fish. Seahorses usually live in the tropics or along temperate coasts. Seahorses also vary in color, including orange, red, yellows, grey, and greens. Seahorses can come in patterns like “zebra stripes” and spots. Seahorses change color to blend in with their surroundings. Seahorses feed on small living animals such as daphnia, cyclops, larvae of water insects, or mysids. Seahorses like to swim in pairs linked by their tales. Seahorses cannot curl their tails backwards. Seahorses belong to the vertabra group, meaning they have an interior skeleton. The small dorsal fins propel it through the water in an upright position, while it beats them back and forth, almost as fast as a humming bird flapping its wings. Seahorses usually mate under a full moon. The pectoral fins control turning and steering. When resting, the seahorse curls its tail around seaweed, to keep it from floating away... Seahorse natural predators are crabs, tuna, skates and rays. Seahorses are loyal and mate for life. During mating, the Seahorses utter musical sounds. The female deposits eggs into the male’s small pouch, and then leaves. Out of the entire animal kingdom, these are the only animals in which the male has babies! Twenty-five million seahorses a year are now being traded around the world - 64 percent more than in the mid-1990s - and environmentalists are increasingly concerned that the booming trade in seahorses is putting the creatures at risk. Seahorses have the superpower of invisibility, in the sense of changing color to blend in with their surroundings. Especially where waiters and bartenders are concerned. Male seahorses give birth to their young, and are very proud of their offspring. In fact, the sun shines out the asses of young seahorses. For example, say a seahorse couple has two offspring that both play in the same music recital because they have the same teacher. They make sure their offspring are bathed, brushed and dressed in clean clothes. Despite these efforts, the younger of the two seahorse babies manages to have a stain on her t-shirt, messy hair and socks that clash with the rest of its outfit when it marches up to play the piano. The father seahorse thinks, What a character, she plays with more personality than all the other seahorses combined. He thinks his offspring plays maybe not better than the others, but with a whole lot of Chico Marx. He figures the stain etc is the price of maintaining her personality. He also notices that she is the only seahorse to play by heart that evening. Or he thinks so, anyway. And when the older of the two young seahorses plays her Bach gigue, he thinks she is the most musical of the harpists that evening, and is in awe of her coordination, because there is much pedaling to be done. It reminds him, coordination-wise, of someone performing a kidney transplant on an unanesthesized ferret, on a bicycle, only it sounds better. The natural predators of seahorses are crabs, among other creatures. And man, of course, the natural predator of everything. Fucking man. Members of different species range in size from .6 to 8 inches. Seahorses are fascinated by the sounds produced by the theremin. Seahorse can give birth to 1500 young ones at once. |
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