How Do Seahorses Work?

These social fish are fascinating for reasons far beyond their unique shapes. Learn about them in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/seahorses.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey,
brain Stuff Floor and Vogue Bomb. Here let's talk about
sea horses from the growling, clicking, and purring sounds that
they often make when greeting their mate to their piley
monogamous nature, and there's much more to this distinctive and
charismatic marine wildlife creature than its trademark horse like head,

(00:25):
elongated mouth, and curly tail. For example, they're actually fish.
They may not look like it due to their unusual
anatomical shape and lack of scales, but they actually belong
to the class of bony fish that includes salmon and swordfish,
and the family affused jawed fish that includes pipe fish
and sea dragons. All sea horses some forty four species

(00:48):
are part of the genus Hippocampus, a combination of the
Greek words for horse and sea monster. Sea horses do
have many fiscal traits in common with fish, including swim
ladders that keep them buoyant in the water and gills
to breathe. Unlike fish, however, sea horses are clad in
a strong suit of sturdy armor like plates and possess

(01:09):
a tough bony structure that makes them difficult for other
fish to digest, the result they don't have many natural predators.
One of the most distinct species is the largest, the
big belly sea horse, found only in Australia, with a
maximum height of around fourteen inches that's thirty five centimeters.
This source has a distinctively large belly that's especially prominent

(01:33):
in males, and also has large dark spots on its
head and trunk, making it easy to identify. Another distinct
group are the smallest pigmy sea horses. They're less than
an inch or two and a half centimeters in length,
and they have an amazing ability to blend perfectly into
their surroundings, which renders them almost impossible to find. Sea

(01:54):
horses are the lowest moving of all fish species because
the only way they have to propel themselves is by
using the tiny fin in the middle of their back.
This single fin can beat back and forth up to
fifty times a second, but the size of the fin
keeps the sea horse from traveling great distances, even with
small pectoral fins that help them steer. Sea horses are

(02:16):
known to be so delicate that they can become fatally
exhausted when waters get rough during storms. However, they are dexterous.
They're flexible tails allow them to anchor themselves to coral
or seaweed when they need to rest. At times, they've
even been known to wrap their tails around their mates
so that they don't lose one another. This aspect of

(02:37):
their anatomy also makes them skilled hitchhikers. They may not
be able to travel long distances quickly alone, but linking
themselves to floating vegetation can take them to all types
of interesting destinations. And sea horses are unusual and that
they not only can move forward, but also up, down,
and backward. The shape of their heads also helps them

(02:59):
glide through the water almost silently. Combine that with their
ability to camouflage into their surroundings thanks to helpful chromatophores
in their skin cells, and sea horses make great hunters,
with a predatory kill rate of around But sea horses
don't have teeth or even a stomach like other marine species,

(03:19):
so how do they eat. Instead of a mouth that
opens and closes like ours, they have a tube for
a snout that they use to suck in all of
their food like a vacuum. They eat pretty much anything
small enough to fit through their mouth, which primarily is
shrimp like creatures, baby fish, and other small organisms. And
because they don't have stomachs, they have to eat constantly.

(03:42):
Since they're slow swimmers, they don't chase their prey, relying
on sneak attacks to catch a meal. And let's talk
about that monogamy. Lots of sea horses stay with the
same partner for one or more breeding seasons. Every morning,
seahorse couples engage in ritualistic dances to greet each other,
ving through intricate rhythmic sequences of twists and twirls for

(04:03):
minutes to hours on end. They engage in these daily
dances to strengthen their romantic bond, to ensure that their
reproductive cycles are properly sinked, and to verify each day
that their partner is both still fervently committed and alive
after holding a complex cording dance. During the reproductive cycle,

(04:23):
female seahorse lays eggs and then places them into a
pouch of skin on the male's body that's known as
a brood pouch. Then the male sea horse settles into
an area to rest throughout gestation, which can last up
to a number of weeks. It's finally time to give birth.
The fathers go through a series of violent contractions that
push out the teensy babies, which are about the size

(04:46):
of grains of rice. They'll spend the first two to
three weeks of their lives alone, drifting along in the
plankton layer of the ocean. Less than one in a
thousand will survive long enough to become an adult, due
to predators that eat them. The sea horse was thought
to have mystical significance among several ancient cultures. The ancient

(05:06):
Greeks and Romans associated the sea horse with the sea
god Neptune or Poseidon, so the sea horse was considered
a symbol of strength and power, and some of the
oldest sea horse stories tell of Poseidon galloping through the
oceans on a golden chariot pulled by hippocamps beasts that
had the head in front, hoofs of a horse, and
a body and tail of a fish. It's thought that

(05:27):
ancient Greek fishermen believed the real sea horses they sometimes
found tangled in their nets were the offspring of Poseidon's
mighty steeds. Other ancient European stories say that the sea
horse carried the souls of deceased sailors to the underworld,
giving them safe passage and protection until they met their
soul's destination, and some ancient Chinese stories labeled the sea

(05:49):
horse a type of seed dragon, and as such were
considered symbols of good luck. Today's episode is based on
article sea horses have Hotels plus nine other amazing sea
horsebacks on how stuff works dot Com, written by Windy Bowman.
Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with
how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler

(06:11):
clang A. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit
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