Seahorse by way of feeding. Animal seahorse: description with photos and videos, interesting facts, sizes. Seahorse: reproduction, description, habitat, species features, life cycle, characteristics and features In which seas do they live
Many have seen these marine life on TV or in aquariums, but not everyone realizes how interesting facts about the seahorse can surprise you. These beautiful representatives of fish amaze with their unique properties. However, in the wild it is very difficult to observe them. Moreover, the number of seahorses has recently declined sharply due to the destruction of their habitats.
- Seahorses are the only fish that have a neck.. Scientists have proven that seahorses are relatives of needlefish. True, during the evolution of their body has changed a lot. Unlike other fish, skates are located vertically in the water due to the fact that the swim bladder is distributed throughout the body. The S-shape of the body allows skates to successfully hunt from cover. They freeze among algae or reefs, and when a tiny larva swims by, they capture it with a turn of their heads.
- Skates can ride "on horseback" on fish. Due to their curved tail, seahorses can travel long distances. They grab the perch's fins and hold on until the fish swims into the algae. And the skates grab their pair with their tail and swim in an embrace.
- The eyes of skates move independently of one another.. The organ of vision in a seahorse is similar to the eyes of a chameleon. One eye of these fish can look forward, and the other can see what is happening behind.
- Disguise Skates. To avoid numerous enemies, seahorses allow the ability to change color depending on the location. Just like chameleons, seahorses match the color of their scales to the color of coral or algae, making them almost invisible.
- Seahorses have a great appetite. They don't have teeth, they don't even have a stomach. In order not to die, these fish have to eat constantly. With their proboscises, skates draw in plankton, small larvae and crustaceans. And it happens so fast that it's hard to track.
- Almost no one eats seahorses. These small fish can become the prey of other predators, perhaps by accident. They are almost entirely composed of bones, spines and scales, so there are few hunters for them, except perhaps rays and large crabs.
- Seahorses are stressed. Stress is often a mortal danger for seahorses. These fish thrive in clean, calm water. Strong pitching at sea leads to the exhaustion of their forces. And with a sudden change of place of residence, they may even die. Therefore, it is difficult to breed skates in aquariums; in an artificial environment, they do not take root well.
- The female chooses the male. We can say that seahorses have a matriarchy. After all, it is the females who decide which of the males to choose as a spouse.
- Seahorses perform mating dances. For several days, the female performs a kind of dance together with the alleged chosen one, rising to the surface of the water and sinking to the bottom, intertwining her tails. If the male falls behind the bride, she will most likely leave him and look for another, more profitable party.
- Male seahorses are "pregnant". If the female has chosen a suitable male for herself, then she remains faithful to him until the end of her life. It is to the male that she entrusts the gestation of eggs and care for the offspring. The female transfers the eggs to a special bag on the body of the male. There, future skates grow for a month and a half. And then they are born full-fledged fish. One male can simultaneously produce from 5 to 1.5 thousand fry. However, male seahorses still cannot be called pregnant. After all, fry are not born in their body, but only remain until full maturation. This is the function of protecting future offspring.
- Skates are fragile, but tenacious. One out of a hundred born seahorse fry survives to full-fledged adults. This is a very high figure for fish. It is thanks to this indicator that seahorses have not died out so far.
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- The horse is on the coat of arms of the city of Zaozersk. For several years in a row, a seahorse was depicted on the coat of arms of the Russian city of Zaozersk (Murmansk region). The image was supposed to symbolize the naval power of the Northern Fleet. But, since seahorses are not found in the waters of the Barents Sea, the image of the seahorse was replaced by the image of a dolphin. It should be noted that seahorses are inhabitants of tropical and subtropical salt water bodies. And the largest seas of Russia are not included in this list.
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- 30 types of skates are listed in the Red Book. And science knows only 32 species of these fish. There are several reasons for the extinction of seahorses. But almost all of them are related to human activities. In Thailand, Australia, Malaysia, skates are caught in order to dry and use as souvenirs. In oriental medicine, they are used to prepare medicines for asthma and skin diseases. In addition, the habitats of seahorses are polluted or completely destroyed by humans. And the plankton useful for skates is often eaten by jellyfish, which are beneficially affected by climate change.
- Seahorses are a delicacy. A dish using the liver and eyes of seahorses is served in the most expensive restaurants in the world. These parts of skates are considered very tasty and healthy. The cost of a delicacy is an average of $ 800 per serving. And in China, fried skates are served on sticks.
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- Skates live on Earth for 40 million years. Despite the fact that fossilized seahorses are rare, scientists have proven that these fish have existed for several tens of millions of years. They appeared at a time when, as a result of tectonic shifts in the earth's crust, shallows formed in the oceans and algae began to spread.
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The reproduction of seahorses living in tropical seas and inhabiting temperate latitudes is slightly different.
In tropical species, it is quite common to see how males greet females at the first rays of the sun, swimming around their chosen ones and, probably, confirming their readiness for breeding. It is noted that the chest area of the male is painted in a dark color, he bows his head and thus makes circles around the female, touching the bottom with his tail. At the same time, the female does not budge, but spins around her axis after the male. In contrast, male temperate seahorses inflate their pouch, causing the stretched skin to become almost white.
During the breeding season, this ritual of greeting is repeated every morning, after which the pair proceeds to "breakfast", remaining in a relatively limited area. At the same time, partners try not to let each other out of their sight. As the moment of mating approaches, the ritual of greeting lasts all day.
It is very important that the fish mature at the same time. On the day when mating takes place, the ritual becomes more frequent. At some point, the female suddenly raises her head and begins to swim up, and the male follows her. At this stage, the female's ovipositor becomes visible, and the male's pouch opens. The female inserts the ovipositor into the opening of the pouch and lays eggs within a few seconds.
If one of the partners is not ready, then spawning is interrupted and everything starts anew. The number of eggs depends, as a rule, on the size of the male (it can be a small, young male, and an adult specimen) and on the type of fish. Some species produce from 30 to 60 eggs for spawning, others - about 500 or more. Synchronization is important
For mating, it is very important that the sex products of both partners mature at the same time. For long-established pairs, mating occurs without a hitch at any time of the day, while for newly formed pairs, one of the partners must wait for the other and remain “fully ready” for several days.
The moment of hatching of fry is also extremely important for many fish. Seahorses are guided by the times of high and low tides, when the current is strongest and can guarantee a wide distribution of offspring. The tides are regulated by the lunar cycle and are especially intense during the full moon. Therefore, it is not surprising that seahorses breed most actively during certain phases of the moon.
The species that I observed was reproductively active on a full moon, and the birth of fry - four weeks after spawning - again fell on a full moon, and after a few days the males were ready to accept a new clutch. During the breeding season, spawning was repeated every four weeks.
The fry hatched in the father's bag and immediately left it. A lot of fry appear at the same time, which makes the male arch his body forward from time to time in order to push them out. Seahorse fry are left to themselves, because after hatching, their parents stop caring for them.
In some species, fry lead a pelagic way of life and drift with the flow, in others they remain in one place. In close relatives of seapikes, the breeding process is basically the same, however, seahorses are the only members of their family that completely hide their eggs in the skin. The rest use folds of skin, which cover the caviar or attach it to special recesses in the body.
The reason for such care of seahorses for offspring may be that in the thickets of grass where fish live, a large number of invertebrates live, for which caviar serves as food.
In free-swimming pipefish and dragons, such contact is rare, so there is no need for additional protection of offspring. The evolution of role reversal But how did the role reversal occur, as a result of which males of the Syngnathidae family began to bear eggs?
Of course, one can only guess about this, but if you look closely at the fish of related families with the usual breeding process, then a certain conclusion suggests itself about how everything could be.
Like many fishes, among the ancestors of syngnatids, spawning probably proceeded as follows: the male and female moved synchronously upwards and simultaneously excreted eggs and milk. After fertilization, the eggs were carried away by the current, or they settled and stuck, for example, on the stalks of sea grass. If such “sticky” eggs successfully developed and the fry survived, then it can be assumed that stickiness only increased in subsequent generations. And then, probably, individual eggs were glued to the abdomen of the male, which gave them the best chance of survival and protection from predators.
If everything was so, then in the process of evolution, fish improved such “care for offspring”.
Seahorses became the first fish in marine aquariums in Japan and Europe. Many species are not only successfully kept in captivity, but also breed, but this occupation requires a lot of effort and time. In scientific publications, there is not a single line about keeping and breeding skates in aquariums, but reports about this appear in aquarium magazines, which, however, are not widely distributed.
Personally, I wrote an article about aquarium breeding of sea dragons from caviar, that is, about fish that are considered unsuitable for an aquarium. After appearing in a recognized magazine, these fish and their breeding methods very quickly became objects of interest, especially for public aquariums.
live food
Many aquarists breed seahorses, and many public aquariums breed these fish. It mainly takes place in Europe, Japan and Singapore.
Interestingly, many breed the Australian species H. abdominalis, a fairly large pipit that easily adapts to captivity.
I have been able to propagate H. whitei from Sydney and H. abdominalis and H. breviceps from Melbourne. In principle, everything is not so difficult. All that is needed is good sea water, an aquarium, scenery that mimics a natural biotope, and a regular supply of quality food for the fish.
The latter can be a problem, especially if the hobbyist does not have a good and nutritious frozen food. I had a similar situation, so every second day I had to go to the sea and dive to catch food for my skates.
But through so many efforts, breeding these fish was no problem.
I started in 1980 breeding H. breviceps and H. abdominalis with the goal of photographing the birth of the fry. However, as it soon became clear, this task was not at all an easy one. I still could not get to the right moment and usually found the hatched fry in the morning hours. It took several months before I managed to catch the moment of "delivery", which proceeds very quickly.
"One-Eyed Bandit"
In 1992, I decided to take tropical seahorses more seriously. In Sydney harbor I caught four male and three female H. whitei. One of the males was one-eyed, and another was "pregnant."
I planted them in an aquarium with an area of one square meter and a height of 50 cm. The water temperature was just over 20 ° C - absolutely normal for this species. Of all the animals, only two formed a pair and, seven days after the birth of the fry, they began mating, the rest of the “non-pregnant” males began to care for all the females in a row.
The one-eyed male did not lag behind the others and more and more often won the attention of one of the females carrying eggs, but in the subsequent “dance ritual”, describing circles around his chosen one, he suddenly lost sight of her.
As far as I can tell, he didn't have a successful mating. Also, the males tried to expel a friend, thereby getting rid of competitors. They bit their rivals, which was accompanied by a clicking sound. Such behavior prevented the not yet mated skates from "tuning in" to each other: once, for example, the eggs fell past the male's pouch.
Often dark-chested males chased females, but there was no noticeable reaction from the latter. Once a one-eyed male undertook to "besiege" a very large female with a large amount of eggs, which, however, did not reciprocate and found another male. True, he showed no interest in her.
The next year, partners often changed each other, and the males continued to see each other only as rivals. For example, one who had just given birth to fry began to besiege another “pregnant” male, who first hid behind “his” female, but was later driven out into a line of furious clicks.
1000 fry per season
At intervals of four weeks, fry appeared on my skates, which I raised in a common aquarium. They grew very quickly, but for this I had to regularly catch food in the ocean that the fry could swallow.
The number of fry was so great that I could not leave all of them in the aquarium, therefore, after growing up the fry, I released them into the ocean, about 50 to 200 individuals per month. At birth, the length of the fry reached 12 mm, and within two weeks they grew twice.
A year later, the health of my "savages" deteriorated, and they stopped spawning. On average, each couple produced 80 fry per month, that is, more than 1000 during the year. Interestingly, the reproductive activity of couples increased, as in nature, during the full moon. Soon, the few fry that I kept for myself began to multiply.
"Eternal love"?
My intensive breeding of seahorses was caused not only by my own desire to observe the mating and birth of fish, but also by numerous requests from other aquarists who were interested in these processes.
Much of what I saw, I could not find an explanation. For example, during a strong storm, all the seahorses gathered at the top of the seagrass stalk, forming a kind of vine. Yes, and the mating itself was fraught with several surprises.
For example, my seahorses turned out to be not so monogamous as described in the literature!
While filming a view of H. breviceps one day, I noticed how one of the females intervened at the moment of mating and transferred her eggs into the male's already open pouch. On another occasion, a male took eggs from two females at once.
And although these observations were made in an aquarium, I am sure that similar things happen in nature. It seems to me that the assumption of monogamy in seahorses has no basis. Observations in natural conditions last a short time and do not give a hint of how the animals will behave in a year.
Mating requires synchronous maturation, and in that sense, pipits are no different from other reef fish, so I can imagine that it is very difficult to find a new partner during the peak of the breeding season.
In such conditions, it is quite advisable for partners to remain together during the entire breeding season.
However, for most species, if not all, caring for offspring is a "seasonal job", and this season depends on climate changes in the corresponding geographical area.
In the tropics, skates start spawning immediately after the rainy season, and in subtropical zones in the spring, when there should be enough food for juveniles in the water. After the breeding season, the animals seem to disperse and go (or better, swim) their own way. Some species migrate to other zones, often to depths. Sometimes at this time I came across reefs on which there were only males or only females, so it seems to me that in nature, seahorses form their pairs only at the beginning of the breeding season.
Don't crucian, don't perch,
Has a long neck
Who is he? Guess soon!
Well, of course, horse!
Seahorse (from lat. Hippocampus) is a small cute marine fish of an unusual shape from the genus of bony fish (family of sea needles) of the needle-shaped order. Looking at this fish, the chess piece of a horse immediately comes to mind. The long neck is a distinctive feature of the skate. If you disassemble the horse into parts of the body, then its head resembles a horse's, the tail is a monkey, the eyes are from a chameleon, and the outer integuments resemble those of insects. The unusual structure of the tail allows the skate to cling to seaweed and corals and hide in them, sensing danger. The ability to mimic (camouflage) makes the seahorse almost invulnerable. The seahorse feeds on plankton. Young skates are quite voracious and can eat for 10 hours in a row, eating up to three thousand crustaceans and shrimps. The vertical position of the seahorse relative to the water is its distinguishing feature.
It is interesting that the seahorse is a caring father and faithful spouse. The heavy burden of motherhood falls on the shoulders of the male. The seahorse independently bears the cub in a special bag, which is located in the lower part of the abdomen of the seahorse. It is there that during mating games the female introduces caviar. If the female dies, the male remains faithful to the partner for a long time and vice versa, if the male dies, the female remains faithful to the male for up to 4 weeks.
Dimensions
The size of a seahorse varies from two to three centimeters to 30. Thirty centimeters is the size of a giant seahorse. The average size is 10 or 12 centimeters. The smallest representatives - pygmy seahorses have about 13 or even 3 millimeters. With a size of 13 centimeters, the weight of a seahorse is about 10 grams.
A few more photos with seahorses.
Many unusual and interesting creatures live in the depths of the sea, among which seahorses deserve special attention.
Seahorses, or scientifically hippocampuses, are small bony fish of the sea piper family. Today there are about 30 species that differ in size and appearance. "Growth" ranges from 2 to 30 centimeters, and the colors are very diverse.
The skates do not have scales, but they are protected by a hard bone shell. Only a land crab can bite through and digest such “clothing”, therefore skates usually do not arouse interest in underwater predators, and they hide in such a way that any needle in a haystack will envy.
Another interesting feature of skates in the eyes: like a chameleon, they can move independently of each other.
How is the fish in the water? No, it's not about them.
Unlike other inhabitants of the sea, skates swim in an upright position, this is possible due to the presence of a large longitudinal swim bladder. By the way, they are very inept swimmers. A small dorsal fin makes fairly fast movements, but this does not give much speed, and the pectoral fins serve mainly as rudders. Most of the time, the skate hangs motionless in the water, catching the algae with its tail.
Every day is stress
Seahorses live in tropical and subtropical seas and prefer clear, calm waters. The greatest danger for them is a strong pitching, which can sometimes lead to complete exhaustion. Seahorses are generally very susceptible to stress. In an unfamiliar environment, they do not get along well, even if there is enough food, in addition, the loss of a partner can be the cause of death.
There is not much food
The seahorse has a primitive digestive system, there are no teeth or a stomach, therefore, in order not to die of hunger, the creature has to constantly eat. According to the way of feeding, skates are predators. When it's time to eat (almost always), they cling to algae with their tails and, like vacuum cleaners, suck up the surrounding water, which contains plankton.
Unusual family
Family relations among skates are also very peculiar. The second half is always chosen by the female. When she sees a suitable candidate, she invites him to dance. Several times the steam rises to the surface and falls again. The main task of the male is to be hardy and keep up with his girlfriend. If he slows down, the capricious lady will immediately find herself another gentleman, but if the test is passed, the couple proceeds to mate.
Seahorses are monogamous, meaning they choose a mate for life and even sometimes swim with their tails tied together. The male bears the offspring, and by the way, these are the only creatures on the planet who have a “male pregnancy”.
The mating dance can last about 8 hours. In the process, the female lays the eggs in a special bag on the male's abdomen. It is there that miniature seahorses will form for the next 50 days.
From 5 to 1500 cubs will be born, only 1 out of 100 will live to adulthood. It seems not enough, but this figure is actually one of the highest among fish.
Why are seahorses dying out?
Seahorses are small peaceful fish that have suffered greatly because of their bright and unusual appearance. People catch them for various purposes: for making gifts, souvenirs, or for preparing an expensive exotic dish that costs about $ 800 per serving. In Asia, dried seahorses are used to make medicines. 30 species out of 32 existing are listed in the Red Book.
The seahorse is a small-sized fish that is a member of the Needle family from the order Sticklebacks. Studies have shown that the seahorse is a highly modified needlefish. Today, the seahorse is a fairly rare creature. In this article you will find a description and photo of a seahorse, learn a lot of new and interesting things about this extraordinary creature.
The seahorse looks very unusual and the shape of the body resembles a chess piece of a horse. The seahorse fish has many long bony spines and various leathery outgrowths on its body. Thanks to this body structure, the seahorse looks invisible among the algae and remains inaccessible to predators. The seahorse looks amazing, it has small fins, its eyes rotate independently of each other, and its tail is twisted into a spiral. The seahorse looks diverse, because it can change the color of its scales.
The seahorse looks small, its size depends on the species and varies from 4 to 25 cm. In the water, the seahorse swims vertically, unlike other fish. This is due to the fact that the swim bladder of a seahorse consists of an abdominal and a head part. The head bladder is larger than the abdominal one, which allows the seahorse to maintain an upright position when swimming.
Now the seahorse is becoming less and less common and is on the verge of extinction due to the rapid decline in numbers. There are many reasons for the extinction of the seahorse. The main one is the destruction by man of both the fish itself and its habitats. Off the coast of Australia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, skates are massively caught. The exotic appearance and bizarre body shape caused people to start making gift souvenirs from them. For beauty, they artificially bend their tail and give the body the shape of the letter "S", but in nature the skates do not look like that.
Another reason that contributes to the decline in the population of seahorses is that they are a delicacy. Gourmets highly appreciate the taste of these fish, especially the eyes and liver of seahorses. In a restaurant, the cost of one serving of such a dish costs $ 800.
In total, there are about 50 species of seahorses, 30 of which are already listed in the Red Book. Fortunately, seahorses are very prolific and can produce over a thousand fry at one time, which keeps the seahorses from disappearing. Seahorses are bred in captivity, but this fish is very whimsical to keep. One of the most extravagant seahorses is the rag-picker seahorse, which you can see in the photo below.
The seahorse lives in tropical and subtropical seas. Seahorse fish lives mainly at shallow depths or near the coast and leads a sedentary lifestyle. The seahorse lives in dense thickets of algae and other marine vegetation. It attaches with its flexible tail to plant stems or corals, remaining almost invisible due to its body covered with various outgrowths and spikes.
The seahorse fish changes body color to blend in completely with its surroundings. Thus, the seahorse successfully disguises itself not only from predators, but also during food production. The seahorse is very bony, so few people want to eat it. The main hunter of the seahorse is the large land crab. The seahorse can travel long distances. To do this, he attaches his tail to the fins of various fish and keeps on them until the "free taxi" swims into the algae thickets.
What do seahorses eat?
Seahorses eat crustaceans and shrimps. Seahorses are very interesting eaters. The tubular stigma, like a pipette, draws prey into the mouth along with water. Seahorses eat quite a lot and hunt almost the whole day, taking short breaks for a couple of hours.
During the day, seahorses eat about 3 thousand planktonic crustaceans. But seahorses eat almost any food, as long as it does not exceed the size of the mouth. The seahorse fish is a hunter. With its flexible tail, the seahorse clings to algae and remains motionless until the prey is in the required proximity to the head. After that, the seahorse sucks in water along with food.
How do seahorses reproduce?
Seahorses reproduce in a rather unusual way, because the male bears their fry. It is not uncommon for seahorses to have monogamous pairs. The mating season of seahorses is an amazing sight. The couple, who are about to enter into a marriage union, are fastened with their tails and dance in the water. In the dance, the skates are pressed against each other, after which the male opens a special pocket in the abdominal region, into which the female throws eggs. In the future, the male bears offspring for a month.
Seahorses breed quite often and bring large offspring. A seahorse gives birth to one thousand or more fry at a time. Fry are born an absolute copy of adults, only very tiny. The babies that are born are left to their own devices. In nature, a seahorse lives for about 4-5 years.
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Many have seen these marine life on TV or in aquariums, but not everyone realizes how interesting facts about the seahorse can surprise you. These beautiful representatives of fish amaze ...
Many have seen these marine life on TV or in aquariums, but not everyone realizes how interesting facts about the seahorse can surprise you. These beautiful representatives of fish amaze ...
Program content:
Introduce children to the seahorse (appearance, lifestyle, behavioral characteristics). Vocabulary: seahorse, horizontally, vertically, portion. Expand children's knowledge of the Red Book.
Cultivate respect for nature.
Equipment:
Photos of a seahorse, chess piece "horse", paper, templates for a seahorse figurine, pencils.
Sea Horse
Sea Horse
Sea Horse
Sea Horse
Sea Horse
Sea Horse
Lesson progress:
In the thickets of sea grass in the Black Sea, you can see funny fish - seahorses. These are very interesting creatures. Take a look at the photo. The head of these fish is exactly like a horse, but there are no scales, the body is covered with hard bone plates. With its tail bent forward, the monkey-like seahorse clings to the stalks of sea grass. The mouth of the skate is a tube, which he is.
Like a vacuum cleaner, it sucks in worms, crustaceans and other small animals. The eyes of the seahorse rotate in any direction, and if one eye looks to the right, the other at this time may stare at something to the left. This is very convenient for the skate, as it can simultaneously inspect the algae from all sides in search of food and follow the enemies, who themselves are not averse to having lunch with them.
The seahorse does not like to swim and spends most of its life clinging to algae with its tail. It swims only in search of food, during the wedding and fleeing from enemies. It swims with a “candle”, belly forward, in an upright position. What does "vertically" mean? (Answers of children). Show your palm upright.
The seahorse will graze. He eats, and then he ties himself with his tail to a stalk of algae and again stands, rests until the next feeding.
Poem about a seahorse
In the sea, in the playful thickets, The flame of a twinkle curls - The waters inflate the mane of the rogue horse.
From the enemy - one jump.
It seems that the seahorse is waving its fins quickly, but the speed is still small. Therefore, the skate rarely succeeds in escaping. He managed to hide - he escaped, but caught the eye of the enemy - they will catch up and eat him.
Fishermen call the seahorse a sea caterpillar. Take a close look at the photo again. Why do you think it is called the sea caterpillar? (Answers of children). The lower part of the body of the skate, especially in motion, looks like a caterpillar. And the upper part, according to many, looks like a horse chess piece. Here is the figure. (Showing a chess piece). Do you agree with this opinion? How do you think there is a resemblance? (Answers of children).
Game "Seahorses"
I suggest you play a little. The carpet is the sea, at the bottom of which you can find worms and crustaceans - the favorite food of seahorses. Each of you will now turn into a skate and go to feed. Attention! Your task is to find 4 crustaceans and 7 worms for each. Get ready! Forward! (After the correctness of the task is calculated - counting "crustaceans" and "worms").
Seahorses do not like to change their place of residence and usually remain for life where their father gave birth. It is the father, not the mother. In skates, the female lays eggs in a special pouch on the male's abdomen. And it all starts with the fact that once in a beautiful underwater "park" the skate first politely bowed to the female, and then invited her to dance.
If she agrees, then the dance begins. The skates either approach and greet each other, then gradually move away and then approach again. This goes on sometimes for days. To make it more convenient to dance, the skates hug each other with the ends of their tails and sing, or rather, make sounds like this. (Snapping fingers). Try to make that sound yourself.
(Children snap their fingers).
This is where the holiday ends. The female lays her eggs in a pouch on the male's belly and swims away forever. And the father-horse bears caviar. When tiny skates hatch from the eggs in the male's abdomen and begin to flounder, he chooses a secluded place and begins to give birth.
To be hooked for stability with a tail for algae, bends, writhes. Finally, his abdominal pouch bursts, ruptures, and the newly-born sons and daughters, as expected, head down, in portions fall out. How do you understand the meaning of the word "in portions"? (Answers of children).
This means not all at once, but in turn, in groups.
There are quite a lot of kids - 100 or 200, so at the end of the birth, the exhausted dad gets so tired that he sinks to the bottom without strength and lies there for a long time, resting in an unloved horizontal position. What does "horizontally" mean? (Answers of children). Show your palm in a horizontal position.
The newly born skates in appearance are the spitting image of their parents. And immediately cling to the algae with their tails. They keep close to their father and in case of danger. On a special sound signal, they hide in his empty pouch on his abdomen. After the danger of a blowjob, nimble kids get out again. Over time, this bag overgrows, and the seahorse is again handsome, and again invites the pretty “seahorse” to dance, and everyone will repeat again.
Now there are less and less seahorses in the Black Sea. The seahorse is even listed in the Red Book of Ukraine. What is this book and who is included there? (Answers of children). Skates are caught not only specifically for the preparation of medicines from them, but often vacationers as a funny souvenir are caught, dried and taken home. The horse is a coastal resident.
He can't swim fast, so it's easy to catch him. Some try to take skates for the aquarium in jars of sea water, but skates do not live in aquariums - they die immediately.
I really hope that if you happen to meet a seahorse, then you will limit yourself to watching him, and not rush to catch.
And if you see how others do it, tell them about the seahorse, ask them not to offend these amazing fish.
And now let's try to dance the dance of seahorses. Get couples. (Children, following the model of an adult, dance to the music).
It's time to remember what you remember about seahorses.
Questions:
1. Is a seahorse a shellfish or a fish? Prove it.2. What does a seahorse eat?3. Why is it said about the skate that he tied himself by the tail? 4. What is the seahorse compared to? Who does he look like?5. How do skates swim?6. What kind of eyes do seahorses have?7. In what cases do skates dance? 8. How are seahorse babies born?9. When does a seahorse lie horizontally on the bottom?
10. Why are seahorses listed in the Red Book?
And at the end of our lesson, I suggest you draw an episode from the life of a seahorse. You can draw the skate itself by circling the template. But what moment of his life you will depict, think over in advance.
Do not forget about the safety of the skate - be sure to draw algae in which he can hide. Get to work.
(After completing the work, the children are invited to give a name to their drawing, look at the drawings of their comrades and try to determine what moment in the life of the skate is shown).
Download the summary of the lesson "Seahorse"
In 1930, The Rogue Song, a film about the kidnapping of a girl in the Caucasus mountains, was released in the US. Actors Stan Laurel, Lawrence Tibbett and Oliver Hardy played local crooks in this film. Surprisingly, these actors are very similar to the heroes
Source: http://vospitatel.com.ua/zaniatia/more/morskoi-konek.html
Seahorse: the structure and habitat of the animal
The seahorse is an amazing and unusual representative of tropical waters. Its appearance and some features of life differ from representatives of the marine environment. Among connoisseurs of such individuals, the question is common: a seahorse is a fish or an animal. The answer to it is simple - the individual belongs to the animal kingdom and the class of ray-finned fish. After many years of research, scientists have proven that the animal is a close relative of the needlefish.
The seahorse belongs to the animal kingdom and the class of ray-finned fish.
General information
Since the animal is considered a highly modified species of pipefish, it belongs to the order Needle-shaped. The unusual body of the skate really resembles a piece in chess. Perhaps this was the reason for giving the animal such a name.
In the natural environment, you can meet the seahorse in subtropical and tropical reservoirs around the world. Salty and maximally pure water is the best condition for its comfortable living. The size of the seahorse is small and ranges from 2 to 30-32 cm. It is quite rare to find individuals that reach 35 cm in length.
There are many theories about where the seahorse lives, since it was met in different parts of the world. Most often, the animal can be found in the waters of Australia, sometimes England. Sometimes individual species are found in the Azov and Black Seas. It prefers to stay close to the bottom and uses algae as cover, camouflaging themselves in their thickets and changing color according to what color they are.
The seahorse prefers to be at the bottom of the reservoir and hide in the algae.
The body of the fish is covered with a very hard and bony shell. which protects against the negative effects of the environment.
Often there are spikes of different lengths and shapes on the body, some are covered with long ribbon-like processes of different colors. Surprisingly, this fish does not have scales. The head will become a feature of the structure, since it is very firmly attached to the body and does not turn.
If the skate wants to look back, he turns his whole body or bulges his eyes.
Each eye moves separately from the other. This feature is also inherent in chameleons, which can rotate each eye separately in a circle. There is debate about how long seahorses live, as they usually live up to 4 years, but in some cases you can find representatives who live up to 6 years.
Another feature of the fish is its vertical position in the water. This is possible due to the fact that the swim bladder is divided into two sections by a thin septum and allows you to maintain a vertical position.
Popular types
There are about 50 species of seahorses in their natural habitat. Each of them differs in size, appearance and some features of the structure. The most common are the following:
- The spotted species is large in size. It has a gray color with small spots all over the body. Life expectancy is no more than 4 years under favorable conditions.
- The rainbow variety is considered the most beautiful, since individuals have a diverse and bright color. The maximum size is 20 cm.
- Deciduous individuals are quite unusual, because instead of the usual spines they have long leaf-like processes. The length of each sometimes reaches 30 cm. This variety is often called the sea dragon.
- The weed horse is rather unusual. It has a bright color with iridescent blue stripes. Its peculiarity is a long muzzle in the form of a tube, which serves to obtain food. This species is listed as endangered.
Pot-bellied skate reaches a length of 37cm
- The Black Sea variety does not have thorns. The body is translucent with a slight yellow tint. Quite often found in shallow water, which distinguishes it from other individuals.
- The prickly horse resembles the Black Sea in appearance, but has sharp spikes 2–3 cm long. The maximum size of individuals does not exceed 25 cm. It lives very close to the bottom and in rare cases is found in shallow water.
- The pot-bellied horse is the largest representative with a body length of up to 37 cm. The first impression when looking at it remains positive. The view is not intimidating and is quite peaceful in relation to humans, as well as other inhabitants of the deep sea.
In southern Japan, dwarf individuals can be found. They are painted in light colors with purple stripes or spots. Perfectly disguised as corals. They have a body length of no more than 3 cm. They prefer not to descend to a depth of more than 40 meters.
Nutrition Features
Amazing fish are one of the few species that are not hunted by other inhabitants of the deep sea. It's all about the structure of individuals, which is dominated by spikes and bone plates. Such food is not able to digest large predatory fish or other hunters. The only one who can eat a skate is a sand crab, whose stomach is able to digest what they eat.
The skates themselves feed on plankton.
The favorite delicacy of these unusual fish is crayfish cubs and other small fish. Thanks to the amazing ability of the skate to disguise itself and remain motionless for several hours, it successfully hunts them. It waits for the moment when the victim approaches and draws it along with water into its mouth.
Seahorses do not have a stomach. Therefore they are very greedy.
Despite their small size, seahorses are very voracious and are capable of hunting and eating a large number of small individuals up to 10 hours a day. This is due to the fact that individuals do not have a stomach, so food quickly passes through all parts of the digestive system. If you keep them in captivity, There are a few feeding rules to follow:
- Captive-bred individuals are able to feed on dead daphnia, shrimp and other small individuals, as well as dry fish food.
- The food must be fresh.
- Individuals should be fed regularly, but overeating should not be allowed, since in captivity this can cause a variety of diseases.
It is allowed to install a variety of feeders in which food is placed. A few days after the installation of such an innovation, the individuals themselves will understand that this is a new place for eating. Near the feeders, several long rods or sticks should be installed so that the skates can cling to them while eating.
seahorse breeding
Unusual fish lead a sedentary lifestyle and are in one place almost all the time. In case of danger, they can develop a decent speed or attach themselves to large fish so that they move them to a safer place.
The fish is loyal and throughout life prefers to be close to one partner. Only in rare cases does a female or male change a life partner. The most incredible will be the fact that in a married couple, the male bears the offspring. After the start of spawning, the couple performs a certain mating dance for a long time. After that, the female transfers the eggs to a special pocket, which is located on the male's belly.
After 2 weeks of gestation, fry come out of the pocket, which are already independent and immediately set off for free swimming. Different types of seahorses differ in their fecundity and can lay from 5 to 2000 eggs at a time.
Breeding skates in captivity is quite difficult and an aquarium hobbyist will not be able to handle it. Despite the fact that individuals are quite popular among aquarists, keeping them in an artificial environment has many nuances. If the conditions are not met, they begin to get sick and die.
Currently, seahorses of various species are on the verge of extinction. This is due to the fact that in many countries the fish is an expensive delicacy, and it is caught on an industrial scale. In some regions of Australia and Asia, skates are used as a raw material for the preparation of various ointments and medicines.
Humanity has known about the healing properties of the meat of this amazing fish since ancient times and included it in many dishes. However, then amateur fishing could not significantly reduce the number of individuals. Now the catch has become a real problem, as it gradually leads to the complete disappearance of the species.
Source: https://rybki.guru/ryba/morskoj-konek.html
Seahorse message
The message about the seahorse can be used in preparation for the lesson. The story about the seahorse for children can be supplemented with interesting facts.
Seahorse Report
Seahorses belong to the class of bony fish. In total there are about 50 species. Sizes of seahorses can be from 2 to 30 cm, depending on the species. A typical seahorse can live up to 5 years.
Their body shape is similar to a chess piece of a horse. Numerous long spikes and ribbon-like leathery outgrowths located on the body of the seahorse make it invisible among algae and inaccessible to predators.
The habitat of seahorses is tropical and subtropical seas.
Seahorse description
The head of these fish looks like a horse, but there are no scales. Their body is covered with hard bony plates. With its tail bent forward, the monkey-like seahorse clings to the stalks of sea grass.
The eyes of the seahorse rotate in any direction, and if one eye looks to the right, the other at this time may stare at something to the left.
This is very convenient for the skate, as it can simultaneously inspect the algae from all sides in search of food and follow the enemies, who themselves are not averse to having lunch with them.
The seahorse does not like to swim and spends most of its life clinging to algae with its tail. It swims slowly and only in search of food, during the wedding and escaping from enemies.
It is interesting to watch how the seahorse swims. A large swim bladder located in the head of the skate helps it to maintain an upright position. It does not move horizontally, but jerks up and down, moving diagonally in the direction of the target.
What do seahorses eat?
Seahorses lead a benthic lifestyle, feeding on plankton and small invertebrates.
seahorse breeding
Also, these animals have an unusual way of reproduction. When the eggs reach the right stage, the females begin to compete with each other for male attention. Having achieved location, the female lays part of the eggs in a special bag, which is located on the male's abdomen.
There, the eggs are fertilized. The male carries the eggs until the young are born. They can be from 2 to 1000 individuals. If many cubs are born, their father may even die. During the breeding season, the fry hatch every 4 weeks.
Immediately after birth, they are left to their own devices.
Interesting facts about seahorses
- The horse is very bony, so it is only hunted by the large land crab, which can digest it.
- The eyes of seahorses are similar to those of chameleons and can move independently of each other;
- The seahorse is a master of disguise. Their scales can become "invisible" - merge with the environment;
- Their mouth works like a vacuum cleaner - they suck up plankton to eat.
We hope that the above information about the seahorse has helped you.
And you can leave your report about the seahorse through the comment form.
Source: https://kratkoe.com/soobshhenie-pro-morskogo-konka/
European seahorse
European or common seahorse (lat. Hippocampus hippocampus) is a marine ray-finned fish from the Needle family (Syngnathidae) of the order Gasterosteiformes. It lives in the Mediterranean Sea and off the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal. There are also small populations off the coast of Great Britain.
The seahorse, unlike many fish, swims vertically in the water or slowly crawls along the seabed. Outwardly, it is somewhat reminiscent of a chess horse figure. The ancient Greeks believed that the sea god Poseidon moves in a chariot drawn by sea horses, so they tried to avoid them in every way out of harm's way.
In the Middle Ages, Europeans, deprived of ancient prejudices, ate these fish as a laxative and a powerful cure for hemorrhoids. At present, the reason for the sharp decline in the population of skates was not the machinations of anxious sufferers, but banal environmental pollution.
European seahorses live in warm, salty waters. They settle mainly in shallow coastal waters, where higher algae with long ribbon-like leaves grow in abundance. In their midst, these fish find a safe haven and plentiful food.
Behavior
The body of the seahorse is protected by an outer bony shell. Nature endowed him with a tenacious tail, a brood pouch and eyes that can move independently of each other. The fish gets a vertical position when swimming due to the fact that the head swim bladder is larger than the abdominal one. She prefers to move by crawling, clinging to algae, soil and pitfalls with her tail.
If necessary, the seahorse swims from one point of support to another, finely fluttering with its short fins. To maintain balance and navigate in the aquatic environment, he is helped by the inner ears located in the skull. In addition to acute hearing, he also has a highly developed sense of smell. The olfactory organ is located under the eyes of nasal strips with two pairs of nostrils.
Rubbing their heads against the elements of the external skeleton, seahorses make sounds similar to weak clicks. With their help, fish notify each other of danger, after which they immediately freeze in the thick of vegetation, completely merging with the environment. Their main natural enemies are various types of crabs that can easily digest their bony bodies.
European seahorses feed mainly on branchiopods, which are always abundant among corals and algae. The fish simply sucks up prey with its thin, elongated stigma. The insignificant size of the food eaten and the unusually simple structure of the digestive system make the skates eat almost constantly. In addition to crustaceans, the diet includes, of course, plankton.
reproduction
The beginning of the mating season of seahorses depends entirely on the temperature of the water. In the Mediterranean they breed from April to October, and in the colder waters of the Atlantic Ocean from May to September. The mating dance is often performed by one male and 2-3 females.
In seahorses, females try to win the favor of the male because it is he who bears the eggs laid by them in his bag. The pouch of one male can accommodate the eggs of two females. The eggs are fertilized the moment they enter the bag. They can be red or pink in color with a diameter of 0.5-3 mm. The walls of the bag swell and thicken, supplying the eggs with oxygen.
Some of the eggs are attached to the wall of the bag, which is permeated with blood vessels, and continues its development. The rest die off, so the number of fry can fluctuate significantly. The fry hatch every 4 weeks.
The male gives birth to cubs, spending a lot of physical effort. During childbirth, he leans back against the plants. Babies are born in small groups and live in a pouch for up to 2 months. Having reached a body length of about 5 mm, they leave the bag and begin an independent life. The fry grow rapidly and in three months grow up to 7 cm. They become sexually mature at 5-8 months.
Description
Adult individuals grow in length up to 15 cm, reaching a weight of 10-18 g. The body is enclosed in an external skeleton, which is a shell of bone plates laid in rings. The color of the body varies from dark brown to black depending on the habitat. Small specks are scattered all over the body.
The pectoral fins are very small and almost transparent. The tail is long and tenacious. With its help, the fish clings to various supports. The head is set vertically on the body. The eyes are relatively large and allow you to look at the same time in different directions and distinguish colors. The stigma is elongated into a narrow tube and opens with a small mouth opening that works like a pipette.
The life span of a European seahorse is 3-4 years.
Source: https://zooclub.org.ua/kolyushkoobraznye/1743-konek-morskoy-evropeyskiy.html
Seahorse message for elementary school
Evgenia Klimkovich
Hello, my dear young readers and wise parents! New topic in the "Projects" section! ShkolaLa helps prepare a message about the seahorse. Whatever grade of elementary school you are in, a report about this inhabitant of the sea will be an indispensable highlight in the lesson of the world around. Read on and you'll understand why.
What kind of animal is a seahorse?
This aquatic inhabitant with an outstanding appearance by no means looks like a fish. But in fact, it belongs to the needle-shaped fish family. Most of all, he looks like a chess piece, which is why he was probably so nicknamed.
The body is crocheted, the back is a hump, the abdomen is forward. Yes, and his head is that of a horse, and his mouth extended into a tube resembles a muzzle, and when he moves, he leans on a tail twisted into a ring.
Why not a horse in miniature!
This fish is also called a dragon, since many species really resemble this fairy-tale character with their wings spread out to the sides, except that there are not three heads, but only one!
In total, there are up to 50 species of seahorses, the size of which can be up to 30 centimeters. But the smallest of them is dwarf, it is only 2 centimeters tall. Almost 30 species are listed in the Red Book.
Research scientists have proven that the closest relative of the seahorse is the needlefish, from which it separated as much as 23 million years ago! Today, numerous long spikes have been preserved from the progenitor of the fish.
Where can you see a seahorse? It lives in the tropics and subtropics. His home is thickets of algae and coral reefs of the Black Sea, the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean, the coast of Australia, the Japanese Yellow Sea and the Russian Sea of Azov.
Seahorses are great at playing hide-and-seek and master the art of camouflage to perfection. They have special cells - chromatophores, which color the horse under its environment. At the same time, you can see the water chameleon only by the nose sticking out of the algae.
Most often, miniature horses are brown, yellowish or green, but those that live among corals are red and purple. Like a Christmas tree toy, such horses hang in the depths of the sea, clinging to the plants with their tail.
How do seahorses swim?
It is difficult to call a seahorse a fish also because it does not swim like everyone else. His body is located vertically in the water. The swim bladder, which runs along the body, helps him maintain balance. It is divided into two parts: the head is larger than the abdominal, so the skate swims upright.
By changing the volume of gas in the bubble, the fish runs, rising up, and also plunging to the depth. If something happens to the skate's bubble, he has no choice but to lie still until he dies.
Dwarf representatives are the slowest fish in the world. They move, as they say, "a teaspoon per hour" - only one and a half meters in 60 minutes.
The tail of the fish is very flexible and without fins, the seahorse uses it like an anchor, clinging to corals and plants. By the way, he can hug his girlfriend with them.
But it cannot row with its tail. To do this, there is a movable fin on the back and a pair of pectoral fins.
Given this structure, the seahorse swimmer is no good, and he strives to compete, spending most of his time in a hovering state, staring around.
What's on the Seahorse's Menu?
The water horse feeds on plankton - small crustaceans, which it hunts down, actively rotating its eyes. The tiny mouth of the fish is located at the end of the muzzle-tube.
As soon as the food approaches the little hunter, he puffs out his cheeks and, like a vacuum cleaner, strongly sucks the crustaceans.
These fish have no teeth or stomach. Their digestive organs are a direct-flow engine that constantly needs to be refueled.
Tiny horses can hang around waiting for food for up to 10 hours, they don’t even need to hunt much, sit in one place, and dinner floats by. Moreover, as we have already understood, he is no swimmer. So a lazy glutton eats up to 3.5 thousand crustaceans per day.
pregnant dads
Yes, we were not mistaken! This is just the only case when pregnancy is not a woman's business. In seahorses, males carry offspring! For this, the male has a bag on his abdomen that looks like a kangaroo, where eggs are laid.
Of these, after 40 days, up to 1,500 miniature seahorses appear.
The seahorse is the only fish that has a neck.
But a frivolous mother all these days visits a friend only in the morning, carelessly sailing away after five minutes of a date until the next day on her own business. Or maybe just forget about it!
Even after birth, dad takes care of the offspring: at the first danger, he gives them a signal, and they instantly hide securely in his bag.
Do seahorses have enemies?
Although the body of a seahorse is covered with a hard bony shell and spikes, and the fish is too tough for most, it can be a dinner for crabs or rays.
However, the biggest danger for him is a person. The unique appearance of the fish and its beneficial properties have become the reasons for the massive catch.
Seahorses are caught for souvenirs, for preparing expensive oriental dishes and for medical purposes.
When searching for food, as well as for vigilance, these fish manage to look with both eyes at the same time in different directions. And their organs of vision can look like this: one forward, and the other to control what is happening behind.
They try to keep exotic seahorses in aquariums, but they do not adapt well to the artificial environment. If nothing threatens the fish, then it can live up to 5 years.
So briefly we talked about an amazing creature with the body of a horse, a kangaroo bag, the rotating eyes of a chameleon and the tenacious tail of a monkey.
I hope you will interest the whole class with your story. And for clarity, print out photos of these exotic fish or, if possible, show them this video. Let the guys see that they are really unique.
Source: http://shkolala.ru/proekty/podvodnyie-zhiteli/soobshheniye-o-morskom-konke/
Seahorse - interesting facts for children
The seahorse is an unusual animal resembling a small magic horse ranging in size from 1.5 to 30 centimeters. It is related to the needle fish. An inhabitant of salty tropical waters is also found off the coast of Eastern Canada and Great Britain. Some species exist in fresh waters. The sea dweller is of constant interest to children and adults.
Appearance
- 1 Appearance
- 2 Behavior
- 3 Red Book
Seahorse - interesting facts for children about appearance. The movement involves a small fin on the back, oscillating up to 35 times per second. Rowing with two gill fins maintains vertical balance. They are weak swimmers, some dwarf species move at a speed of one and a half meters per hour. The upward and downward spiral movement provides a change in the volume of the swim bladder.
They are able to change color depending on the surrounding plants, therefore they are invisible in the aquatic environment. The body is covered with bony armor instead of scales. Like tropical birds, they have a rich color palette with stripes and specks. They are difficult to distinguish from corals.
Don't crucian, don't perch,
Has a long neck
Who is he? Guess soon!
Well, of course, horse!
Seahorse (from lat. Hippocampus) is a small cute marine fish of an unusual shape from the genus of bony fish (family of sea needles) of the needle-shaped order. Looking at this fish, the chess piece of a horse immediately comes to mind. The long neck is a distinctive feature of the skate. If you disassemble the horse into parts of the body, then its head resembles a horse's, the tail is a monkey, the eyes are from a chameleon, and the outer integuments resemble those of insects. The unusual structure of the tail allows the skate to cling to seaweed and corals and hide in them, sensing danger. The ability to mimic (camouflage) makes the seahorse almost invulnerable. The seahorse feeds on plankton. Young skates are quite voracious and can eat for 10 hours in a row, eating up to three thousand crustaceans and shrimps. The vertical position of the seahorse relative to the water is its distinguishing feature.
It is interesting that the seahorse is a caring father and faithful spouse. The heavy burden of motherhood falls on the shoulders of the male. The seahorse independently bears the cub in a special bag, which is located in the lower part of the abdomen of the seahorse. It is there that during mating games the female introduces caviar. If the female dies, the male remains faithful to the partner for a long time and vice versa, if the male dies, the female remains faithful to the male for up to 4 weeks.
Dimensions
The size of a seahorse varies from two to three centimeters to 30. Thirty centimeters is the size of a giant seahorse. The average size is 10 or 12 centimeters. The smallest representatives - pygmy seahorses have about 13 or even 3 millimeters. With a size of 13 centimeters, the weight of a seahorse is about 10 grams.
A few more photos with seahorses.
One appearance of these fish sets up pleasant associations with childhood, toys and fairy tales.
The horse swims in an upright position and tilts its head so gracefully that, looking at it, it is impossible not to compare it with some kind of small magic horse.
It is covered not with scales, but with bone plates. However, in his shell, he is so light and fast that he literally soars in the water, and his body shimmers with all colors - from orange to gray-blue, from lemon yellow to fiery red. By the brightness of the colors, it is just right to compare this fish with tropical birds.
Seahorses inhabit the coastal waters of tropical and subtropical seas. But they are also found in the North Sea, for example, off the southern coast of England. Choose quieter places; they don't like rough water.
Among them there are dwarfs the size of a little finger, and there are giants under thirty centimeters. The smallest species - Hippocampus zosterae (pygmy seahorse) - is found in the Gulf of Mexico. Its length does not exceed four centimeters, and the body is very hardy.
In the Black and Mediterranean Seas, you can meet the long-snouted, spotted Hippocampus guttulatus, whose length reaches 12-18 centimeters. The most famous representatives of the species Hippocampus kuda, which lives off the coast of Indonesia. Seahorses of this species (their length is 14 centimeters) are painted brightly and colorfully, some are speckled, others are striped. The largest seahorses are found near Australia.
Whether they are dwarfs or giants, seahorses resemble each other like brothers: a trusting look, capricious lips and an elongated "horse" muzzle. Their tail is hooked to the stomach, and horns adorn their heads. It is impossible to confuse these graceful and colorful fish, similar to jewelry or toys, with any inhabitant of the water element.
How does pregnancy proceed in males?
Even now, zoologists find it difficult to say how many species of seahorses there are. Possibly 30-32 species, although this figure is subject to change. The fact is that seahorses are difficult to classify. Their appearance is too changeable. Yes, and they know how to hide in such a way that a needle thrown into a haystack will envy.
When Amanda Vincent of Montreal's McGill University began studying seahorses in the late 1980s, she was annoyed: "At first, I couldn't even notice those subs." Masters of mimicry, in a moment of danger, they change their color, repeating the color of surrounding objects. Therefore, they are easily mistaken for algae. Many seahorses, like gutta-percha babies, can even change the shape of their bodies. They have small growths and nodules. Some seahorses can be difficult to distinguish from corals.
This plasticity, this “color music” of the body helps them not only to fool enemies, but also to seduce partners. The German zoologist Rüdiger Verhasselt shares his observations: “I had a pink-red male in my aquarium. I put a bright yellow female with a red dot on him. The male began to take care of the new fish and after a few days turned the same color as her - even red specks appeared.
In order to watch enthusiastic pantomimes and colorful confessions, one must go underwater early in the morning. In their confessions, they follow a funny etiquette: they nod their heads to greet a friend, while clinging to neighboring plants with their tails. Sometimes they freeze, getting closer in a “kiss”. Or whirl in a stormy love dance, and the males now and then inflate their stomachs.
The date is over - and the fish spread out to the sides. Adyu! See you next time! Seahorses usually live in monogamous pairs, loving each other to death, which they often have in the form of nets. After the death of a partner, his half misses, but after a few days or weeks he finds a roommate again. Seahorses settled in an aquarium suffer especially from the loss of a partner. And it happens that they die one after another, unable to bear the grief.
What is the secret of such affection? In the kindred of souls? Here's how biologists explain it: by regularly walking and caressing each other, seahorses synchronize their biological clocks. This helps them choose the most opportune moment for procreation. Then their meeting is delayed for several hours, or even days. They glow with excitement and whirl in a dance in which, as we remember, males inflate their stomachs. It turns out that the male has a wide fold on the abdomen, where the female lays her eggs.
Surprisingly, in seahorses, the male bears the offspring, having previously fertilized the eggs in the abdominal bag.
But this behavior is not as exotic as it might seem. Other species of fish are also known, for example, cichlids, in which males hatch caviar. But only in seahorses are we dealing with a process similar to pregnancy. The tissue on the inside of the brood pouch thickens in the male, as in the mammalian uterus. This tissue becomes a kind of placenta; it binds the father's body to the embryos and nourishes them. This process is controlled by the hormone prolactin, which stimulates lactation in humans - the formation of mother's milk.
With the onset of pregnancy, walking through the underwater forests stops. The male keeps on a plot of about one square meter. In order not to compete with him in obtaining food, the female delicately swims to the side.
After a month and a half, "birth" occurs. The seahorse presses against the kelp stalk and inflates its belly again. Sometimes a whole day passes before the first fry slips out of the bag. Then the young will start to emerge in pairs, faster and faster, and soon the bag will expand so much that dozens of fry will swim out of it at the same time. The number of newborns in different species is different: some seahorses breed up to 1600 babies, while others have only two fry.
Sometimes the "birth" is so difficult that the males die of exhaustion. In addition, if for some reason the embryos die, then the male who carried them will also die.
Evolution cannot explain the origin of the seahorse's reproductive functions. The whole childbearing process is too "unorthodox." Indeed, the structure of the seahorse appears to be a mystery if you try to explain it as the result of evolution. As one major expert said a few years ago: “In relation to evolution, the seahorse is in the same category as the platypus. Since it is a mystery that confuses and destroys all theories trying to explain the origin of this fish! Recognize the Divine Creator, and everything is explained.
What do seahorses do if they don't flirt and expect offspring? One thing is certain: they do not shine with success in swimming, which is not surprising given their constitution. They have; only three small fins: the dorsal helps to swim forward, and the two gill fins maintain vertical balance and serve as a rudder. In a moment of danger, seahorses can briefly speed up their movement, flapping their fins up to 35 times per second (some scientists even call the number "70"). They are much better at vertical maneuvers. By changing the volume of the swim bladder, these fish move up and down in a spiral.
However, most of the time, the seahorse hangs motionless in the water, catching its tail on algae, coral, or even the neck of a relative. It seems that he is ready to hang around doing nothing all day. However, with visible laziness, he manages to catch a lot of prey - tiny crustaceans and fry. It has only recently been possible to observe how this happens.
The seahorse does not rush for prey, but waits until it swims up to it. Then he draws in the water, swallowing careless small fry. Everything happens so fast that you can't see it with the naked eye. However, scuba divers say that when you get close to a seahorse, you sometimes hear smacking. The appetite of this fish is amazing: barely born, the seahorse manages to swallow about four thousand miniature shrimps in the first ten hours of life.
In total, he is destined to live, if he's lucky, four or five years. Enough time to leave behind millions of descendants. It seems that with such numbers, the prosperity of seahorses is ensured. However, it is not. Out of a thousand fry, only two survive on average. All the rest themselves fall into someone's mouth. However, in this whirlwind of births and deaths, seahorses have been afloat for forty million years. Only human intervention can destroy this species.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, the number of seahorses is rapidly declining. Thirty species of these fish are included in the Red Book, that is, almost all species known to science. The ecology is primarily responsible for this. The oceans are turning into a world dump. Its inhabitants degenerate and die.
Half a century ago, the Chesapeake Bay - a narrow, long bay off the coast of the US states of Maryland and Virginia (its length reaches 270 kilometers) - was considered a real paradise for seahorses. Now you can hardly find them there. Alison Scarrat, director of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, estimates that ninety percent of the algae in the bay have died in that half-century, due to water pollution. But algae were the natural habitat of seahorses.
Another reason for the decline is the massive capture of seahorses off the coast of Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and the Philippines. According to Amanda Vincent, at least 26 million of these fish are harvested every year. A small part of them then ends up in aquariums, and most die. For example, from these cute fish, drying them, they make souvenirs - brooches, key rings, belt buckles. By the way, for the sake of beauty, they bend their tail back, giving the body the shape of the letter S.
However, most of the seahorses caught - about twenty million according to the World Wildlife Fund - end up with pharmacists in China, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia and Singapore. The largest transshipment point for the sale of this "medical raw material" is Hong Kong. From here it is sold to more than thirty countries, including India and Australia. Here, a kilo of seahorses costs about $1,300.
From these dried fish, crushed and mixed with other substances, such as tree bark, drugs are prepared that are just as popular in Japan, Korea, China as we are - aspirin or analgin. They help with asthma, coughs, headaches and especially impotence. Recently, this Far Eastern "Viagra" has become popular in Europe.
However, even ancient authors knew that medicines could be prepared from seahorses. So, Pliny the Elder (24-79) wrote that in case of hair loss, one should use an ointment prepared from a mixture of dried seahorses, marjoram oil, resin and lard. In 1754, the English Gentlemen's Magazine advised breastfeeding mothers to take seahorse extract "for better milk flow." Of course, old recipes can bring a smile, but now the World Health Organization is conducting a study on the "healing properties of the seahorse."
Meanwhile, Amanda Vincent and a number of biologists are advocating a complete ban on the uncontrolled harvesting and trade of seahorses, trying to end predatory fishing, as whaling was done in its time. The situation is that in Asia, seahorses are caught mainly by poachers. To end this, the researcher created the Project Seahorse organization back in 1986, which is trying to protect seahorses in Vietnam, Hong Kong and the Philippines, as well as establish a civilized trade in them. Things are especially successful on the Philippine island of Khandayan.
The inhabitants of the local village of Handumon have been harvesting seahorses for centuries. However, in just a decade, from 1985 to 1995, their catches dropped by almost 70 percent. Therefore, the seahorse rescue program proposed by Amanda Vincent was perhaps the only hope for the fishermen.
To begin with, it was decided to create a protected area with a total area of thirty-three hectares, where fishing was completely banned. There, all the seahorses were counted and even numbered, putting a collar on them. From time to time, divers looked into this water area and checked if the “lazy homebodies”, seahorses, had swum away from here.
We agreed that males with full brood bags will not be caught outside the protected area. If they were caught in the net, they were thrown back into the sea. In addition, environmentalists have tried to re-plant mangroves and underwater forests of algae - the natural shelters of these fish.
In some zoos - in Stuttgart, Berlin, Basel, as well as in the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the California Aquarium, the breeding of these fish is going well. Perhaps they can be saved.
In the seas surrounding Russia, there are only two species of seahorses (although the species diversity of horses is great, there are 32 species of seahorses in different seas of the world). These are the Black Sea seahorse and the Japanese seahorse. The first lives in the Black and Azov seas, and the second in the Japanese.
“Our” seahorses are small and do not have chic long outgrowths all over their bodies, like, for example, a rag-picker that lives in warm seas and disguises itself as thickets of sargasso algae. Their carapace has a modest protective function: it is very strong and usually painted to match the color of the background.
As with many creatures that fill the seas, skies and land, there is no link for the seahorse that can connect it with any other form of life. Like all major types of living creatures, the complex seahorse was created suddenly, as the book of Genesis tells us.
Seahorses are very peculiar fish with an outstanding appearance and interesting biology. They belong to the needle family of the order Kolushkoiformes. Such an affiliation is not accidental, because seahorses, one might say, are brothers of other interesting fish - sea needles. In total, 50 species of seahorses are known, several of the largest species are called sea dragons.
Grass sea dragon, or rag-picker horse (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus).
The appearance of seahorses is so unusual that at first glance it is difficult to recognize them as fish. The body of the skates is intricately curved, the back sticks out like a hump, the abdomen also protrudes forward, the front part of the body is thin and curved like the neck of a horse (hence the name). The head is small, its anterior part is elongated with a tube, the eyes are bulging. The tail of seahorses is long and very flexible; in a calm state, fish twist it into a ring or wrap their tail around the stems of aquatic plants. The body of the skates is covered with various thickenings, bumps, outgrowths and similar decorations. The color of these fish is often of the same color, but different species are colored very differently. In any case, the coloring of each species very accurately imitates the color and texture of the surface on which this skate lives. Skates living among aquatic plants are often brown, yellowish, green; seahorses living among corals can be red, bright yellow, purple.
Seahorses are masters of the art of camouflage.
In addition, each fish can change its shade to some extent. Seahorses are small fish, ranging in size from 2 to 20 cm.
The smallest species, the pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus bargibanti), is only 2 cm long. It is completely indistinguishable from coral branches.
These fish live in the seas of tropical and subtropical zones. Their range encircles the entire globe. Seahorses live in shallow waters among seaweed beds or among corals. These are sedentary and generally very inactive fish. Typically, seahorses wrap their tail around a twig of coral or a tuft of seagrass and spend most of their time in this position. But large sea dragons do not know how to attach themselves to vegetation. For short distances they swim holding the body vertically, if they have to leave the "house", then they can swim in an almost horizontal position. They swim slowly. In general, the nature of these fish is surprisingly calm and meek, seahorses do not show aggression towards fellow tribesmen and other fish.
The intricately decorated leafy sea dragon (Phycodurus eques) is indistinguishable from its surroundings.
They feed on plankton. They track down the smallest crustaceans, rolling their eyes funny. As soon as the prey approaches the miniature hunter, the seahorse puffs out its cheeks, creating negative pressure in the oral cavity and sucks the crustacean like a vacuum cleaner. Despite their small size, skates are big eaters and can indulge in gluttony up to 10 hours a day.
Seahorses are monogamous fish, they live in married couples, but can periodically change partners. Characteristically, these fish bear eggs, with males and females changing roles. During the mating season, a tubular ovipositor grows in females, and in the male, thickened folds in the tail area form a bag. Before spawning, partners perform a long mating dance.
A spawning pair of seahorses.
The female lays the eggs in the male's pouch and he incubates them for about 2 weeks. Newborn fry exit the pouch through a narrow opening. Sea dragons do not have a bag and carry eggs on the tail stalk. The fertility of different species ranges from 5 to 1500 fry. Newborn fish are completely independent and move away from the parent pair.
Eggs on the tail of a sea dragon.
Currently, many species of seahorses have become very rare, and some are even on the verge of extinction. This is facilitated by the massive catch of these fish and their low fertility. Seahorses are caught for meat, which is used in cooking in eastern countries and in oriental medicine. In addition, souvenirs made from dried seahorses are very popular. Keeping seahorses in aquariums is not very easy, they are demanding on food and prone to disease, but it is very interesting to watch them.
Leafy sea dragon hatches eggs.
how a male seahorse gives birth to fry.
Hello, my dear young readers and wise parents! New topic in the "Projects" section! ShkolaLa helps prepare a message about the seahorse. Whatever grade of elementary school you are in, a report about this inhabitant of the sea will be an indispensable highlight in the lesson of the world around. Read on and you'll understand why.
Lesson plan:
What kind of animal is a seahorse?
This aquatic inhabitant with an outstanding appearance by no means looks like a fish. But in fact, it belongs to the needle-shaped fish family. Most of all, he looks like a chess piece, which is why he was probably so nicknamed.
The body is crocheted, the back is a hump, the abdomen is forward. Yes, and his head is that of a horse, and his mouth extended into a tube resembles a muzzle, and when he moves, he leans on a tail twisted into a ring.
Why not a horse in miniature!
This fish is also called a dragon, since many species really resemble this fairy-tale character with their wings spread out to the sides, except that there are not three heads, but only one!
In total, there are up to 50 species of seahorses, the size of which can be up to 30 centimeters. But the smallest of them is dwarf, it is only 2 centimeters tall. Almost 30 species are listed in the Red Book.
It is interesting! Research scientists have proven that the closest relative of the seahorse is the needlefish, from which it separated as much as 23 million years ago! Today, numerous long spikes have been preserved from the progenitor of the fish.
Where can you see a seahorse? It lives in the tropics and subtropics. His home is thickets of algae and coral reefs of the Black Sea, the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean, the coast of Australia, the Japanese Yellow Sea and the Russian Sea of Azov.
It is interesting! Seahorses are great at playing hide-and-seek and master the art of camouflage to perfection. They have special cells - chromatophores, which color the horse under its environment. At the same time, you can see the water chameleon only by the nose sticking out of the algae.
Most often, miniature horses are brown, yellowish or green, but those that live among corals are red and purple. Like a Christmas tree toy, such horses hang in the depths of the sea, clinging to the plants with their tail.
How do seahorses swim?
It is difficult to call a seahorse a fish also because it does not swim like everyone else. His body is located vertically in the water. The swim bladder, which runs along the body, helps him maintain balance. It is divided into two parts: the head is larger than the abdominal, so the skate swims upright.
By changing the volume of gas in the bubble, the fish runs, rising up, and also plunging to the depth. If something happens to the skate's bubble, he has no choice but to lie still until he dies.
It is interesting! Dwarf representatives are the slowest fish in the world. They move, as they say, "a teaspoon per hour" - only one and a half meters in 60 minutes.
The tail of the fish is very flexible and without fins, the seahorse uses it like an anchor, clinging to corals and plants. By the way, he can hug his girlfriend with them.
But it cannot row with its tail. To do this, there is a movable fin on the back and a pair of pectoral fins.
Given this structure, the seahorse swimmer is no good, and he strives to compete, spending most of his time in a hovering state, staring around.
What's on the Seahorse's Menu?
The water horse feeds on plankton - small crustaceans, which it hunts down, actively rotating its eyes. The tiny mouth of the fish is located at the end of the muzzle-tube.
As soon as the food approaches the little hunter, he puffs out his cheeks and, like a vacuum cleaner, strongly sucks the crustaceans.
It is interesting! These fish have no teeth or stomach. Their digestive organs are a direct-flow engine that constantly needs to be refueled.
Tiny horses can hang around waiting for food for up to 10 hours, they don’t even need to hunt much, sit in one place, and dinner floats by. Moreover, as we have already understood, he is no swimmer. So a lazy glutton eats up to 3.5 thousand crustaceans per day.
pregnant dads
Yes, we were not mistaken! This is just the only case when pregnancy is not a woman's business. In seahorses, males carry offspring! For this, the male has a bag on his abdomen that looks like a kangaroo, where eggs are laid.
Of these, after 40 days, up to 1,500 miniature seahorses appear.
It is interesting! The seahorse is the only fish that has a neck.
But a frivolous mother all these days visits a friend only in the morning, carelessly sailing away after five minutes of a date until the next day on her own business. Or maybe just forget about it!
Even after birth, dad takes care of the offspring: at the first danger, he gives them a signal, and they instantly hide securely in his bag.
Do seahorses have enemies?
Although the body of a seahorse is covered with a hard bony shell and spikes, and the fish is too tough for most, it can be a dinner for crabs or rays.
However, the biggest danger for him is a person. The unique appearance of the fish and its beneficial properties have become the reasons for the massive catch.
Seahorses are caught for souvenirs, for preparing expensive oriental dishes and for medical purposes.
It is interesting! When searching for food, as well as for vigilance, these fish manage to look with both eyes at the same time in different directions. And their organs of vision can look like this: one forward, and the other to control what is happening behind.
They try to keep exotic seahorses in aquariums, but they do not adapt well to the artificial environment. If nothing threatens the fish, then it can live up to 5 years.
So briefly we talked about an amazing creature with the body of a horse, a kangaroo bag, the rotating eyes of a chameleon and the tenacious tail of a monkey.
I hope you will interest the whole class with your story. And for clarity, print out photos of these exotic fish or, if possible, show them this video. Let the guys see that they are really unique.
See you soon on the ShkolaLa blog and in the Projects section
Success in your studies!
Evgenia Klimkovich
The seahorse is a small-sized fish that is a member of the Needle family from the order Sticklebacks. Studies have shown that the seahorse is a highly modified needlefish. Today, the seahorse is a fairly rare creature. In this article you will find a description and photo of a seahorse, learn a lot of new and interesting things about this extraordinary creature.
The seahorse looks very unusual and the shape of the body resembles a chess piece of a horse. The seahorse fish has many long bony spines and various leathery outgrowths on its body. Thanks to this body structure, the seahorse looks invisible among the algae and remains inaccessible to predators. The seahorse looks amazing, it has small fins, its eyes rotate independently of each other, and its tail is twisted into a spiral. The seahorse looks diverse, because it can change the color of its scales.
The seahorse looks small, its size depends on the species and varies from 4 to 25 cm. In the water, the seahorse swims vertically, unlike other fish. This is due to the fact that the swim bladder of a seahorse consists of an abdominal and a head part. The head bladder is larger than the abdominal one, which allows the seahorse to maintain an upright position when swimming.
Now the seahorse is becoming less and less common and is on the verge of extinction due to the rapid decline in numbers. There are many reasons for the extinction of the seahorse. The main one is the destruction by man of both the fish itself and its habitats. Off the coast of Australia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, skates are massively caught. The exotic appearance and bizarre body shape caused people to start making gift souvenirs from them. For beauty, they artificially bend their tail and give the body the shape of the letter "S", but in nature the skates do not look like that.
Another reason that contributes to the decline in the population of seahorses is that they are a delicacy. Gourmets highly appreciate the taste of these fish, especially the eyes and liver of seahorses. In a restaurant, the cost of one serving of such a dish costs $ 800.
In total, there are about 50 species of seahorses, 30 of which are already listed in the Red Book. Fortunately, seahorses are very prolific and can produce over a thousand fry at one time, which keeps the seahorses from disappearing. Seahorses are bred in captivity, but this fish is very whimsical to keep. One of the most extravagant seahorses is the rag-picker seahorse, which you can see in the photo below.
The seahorse lives in tropical and subtropical seas. Seahorse fish lives mainly at shallow depths or near the coast and leads a sedentary lifestyle. The seahorse lives in dense thickets of algae and other marine vegetation. It attaches with its flexible tail to plant stems or corals, remaining almost invisible due to its body covered with various outgrowths and spikes.
The seahorse fish changes body color to blend in completely with its surroundings. Thus, the seahorse successfully disguises itself not only from predators, but also during food production. The seahorse is very bony, so few people want to eat it. The main hunter of the seahorse is the large land crab. The seahorse can travel long distances. To do this, he attaches his tail to the fins of various fish and keeps on them until the "free taxi" swims into the algae thickets.
What do seahorses eat?
Seahorses eat crustaceans and shrimps. Seahorses are very interesting eaters. The tubular stigma, like a pipette, draws prey into the mouth along with water. Seahorses eat quite a lot and hunt almost the whole day, taking short breaks for a couple of hours.
During the day, seahorses eat about 3 thousand planktonic crustaceans. But seahorses eat almost any food, as long as it does not exceed the size of the mouth. The seahorse fish is a hunter. With its flexible tail, the seahorse clings to algae and remains motionless until the prey is in the required proximity to the head. After that, the seahorse sucks in water along with food.
How do seahorses reproduce?
Seahorses reproduce in a rather unusual way, because the male bears their fry. It is not uncommon for seahorses to have monogamous pairs. The mating season of seahorses is an amazing sight. The couple, who are about to enter into a marriage union, are fastened with their tails and dance in the water. In the dance, the skates are pressed against each other, after which the male opens a special pocket in the abdominal region, into which the female throws eggs. In the future, the male bears offspring for a month.
Seahorses breed quite often and bring large offspring. A seahorse gives birth to one thousand or more fry at a time. Fry are born an absolute copy of adults, only very tiny. The babies that are born are left to their own devices. In nature, a seahorse lives for about 4-5 years.
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Origin of the species and description
Seahorses belong to the genus of ray-finned fish from the order of needle-shaped. Studies conducted on seahorses have shown that seahorses are a highly modified subspecies. Like needle fish, seahorses have an elongated body shape, a peculiar structure of the oral cavity, and a long mobile tail. There are not many remains of seahorses found - the earliest date back to the Pliocene, and the separation of pipefish and seahorses occurred in the Oligocene.
Video: Seahorse
The reasons are not exactly established, but the following stand out:
- the formation of multiple shallow waters, where fish often swam as vertically as possible;
- the spread of numerous algae and the occurrence of a current. So the fish had a need to develop the grasping functions of the tail.
There are bright varieties of seahorses that are not unanimously classified as this species by all scientists.
Some of the most colorful seahorses are:
- pipefish. In appearance, it resembles a tiny seahorse with a very elongated thin body;
- prickly seahorse - the owner of strong long needles throughout the body;
- sea dragons, especially leafy ones. They have a characteristic camouflage shape, as if completely covered with leaves and processes of algae;
- pygmy seahorse - the smallest representative of seahorses, the size of which barely exceeds 2 cm;
- the Black Sea horse is a species that does not have thorns.
Appearance and features
The seahorse got its name not by chance - its body shape resembles a chess horse. The elongated curved body is distinctly divided into the head, trunk and tail. The seahorse is completely covered with chitinous growths that have a ribbed shape. This gives it a resemblance to algae. The growth of seahorses is different, depending on the species, it can reach 4 cm or 25 cm. It also differs from other fish in that it swims vertically, holding its tail down.
This is due to the fact that the abdominal bladder is located in the abdominal and head parts, and the head bladder is larger than the abdominal one. Therefore, the head seems to "float" up. The fins of the seahorse are small, they serve as a kind of "rudder" - with their help, it turns around in the water and maneuvers. Although seahorses swim very slowly, relying on camouflage. There is also a dorsal fin that allows the seahorse to maintain an upright position at all times.
Interesting fact: Seahorses can look different - sometimes their shape resembles algae, stones and other objects among which they camouflage.
The seahorse has a sharp, elongated muzzle with pronounced large eyes. The seahorse does not have a mouth in the classical sense - it is a tube similar in physiology to the oral cavities of anteaters. He draws himself into the water through a tube to feed and breathe. The color can be very diverse, it also depends on the habitat of the seahorse. The most common species have a gray chitinous cover with rare small black dots. There are types of bright colors: yellow, red, green. Often the bright coloration is accompanied by corresponding fins resembling algae leaves.
The tail of a seahorse is interesting. It is curved, and unbends only with intensive swimming. With such a tail, seahorses can cling to objects in order to hold on during strong currents. The abdominal cavity of seahorses is also noteworthy. The fact is that the reproductive organs are located there. In females, this is the ovipositor, and in males, the abdominal pouch, which looks like a hole in the middle of the abdomen.
Where does the seahorse live?
Seahorses prefer tropical and subtropical waters, and the water temperature must be stable.
Most often they can be found along the following coasts:
- Philippine Islands;
Most often they live in shallow water, but there are species that live in depth. Seahorses lead a sedentary lifestyle, hiding in algae and coral reefs. They grab onto various objects with their tails and make occasional dashes from stem to stem. Due to the shape of the body and its color, seahorses are perfectly camouflaged.
Some seahorses can change color to suit their new environment. So they disguise themselves from predators and more efficiently get their own food. The seahorse makes long journeys in a peculiar way: it clings to some fish with its tail, and unhooks from it when the fish gets into algae or reefs.
Now you know where is the seahorse. Let's see what this animal eats.
What does a seahorse eat?
Due to the peculiar physiology of the mouth, seahorses can only eat very small food. It draws water into itself like a pipette, and along with the flow of water, plankton and other small food enter the seahorse's mouth.
Large seahorses can draw in:
- crustaceans;
- shrimp;
- small fish;
- tadpoles;
- eggs of other fish.
It is difficult to call a seahorse an active predator. Small species of seahorses feed continuously by sucking in water. Large seahorses resort to camouflage hunting: they cling to algae and coral reefs with their tails, waiting for suitable prey to be nearby.
Due to their slowness, seahorses do not know how to pursue a victim. During the day, small species of seahorses eat up to 3 thousand crustaceans as part of plankton. They feed continuously throughout any time of the day - the fact is that the skate does not have a digestive system, so you have to eat constantly.
Interesting fact: It is not uncommon for seahorses to eat larger fish; they are illegible in food - the main thing is that the prey fit into the mouth.
In captivity, seahorses feed on shrimp and special dry food. The peculiarity of feeding at home is that the food must be fresh, and must be supplied regularly, otherwise seahorses can get sick and die.
Features of character and lifestyle
Seahorses lead a sedentary lifestyle. The maximum speed that they can develop is up to 150 meters per hour, but they move extremely rarely, if necessary. Seahorses are non-aggressive fish that never attack other fish, even though they are. They live in small flocks of 10 to 50 individuals, do not have any hierarchy and structure. An individual from one flock can easily live in another flock.
Therefore, despite the group habitation, seahorses are independent individuals. Interestingly, seahorses can form long-term monogamous pairs. Sometimes such a union lasts the whole life of seahorses. A pair of seahorses - male and male, are formed after the first successful breeding of offspring. In the future, the couple breeds almost continuously, if there are no factors preventing this.
Seahorses are extremely susceptible to all kinds of stress. For example, if a seahorse loses its partner, it loses interest in breeding and may refuse to eat at all, due to which it dies within a day. Also stressful for them is trapping and relocation to aquariums. As a rule, caught seahorses must be adapted by qualified specialists - captured individuals are not transplanted into aquariums with ordinary amateurs.
Wild seahorses are extremely poorly adapted to home conditions, most often become depressed and die. But seahorses born in aquariums calmly survive living at home.
Social structure and reproduction
Seahorses do not have a fixed mating season. Males, reaching puberty, begin to circle around the selected female, demonstrating their readiness for mating. During this period, the soft area of the male chest, not protected by chitin, darkens. The female does not react to these dances, freezes in place and watches the male or several males at once.
Some large species of seahorses are able to inflate the chest bag. This ritual is repeated for several days until the female chooses a male for herself. Before mating, the chosen male may "dance" all day to the point of exhaustion. The female signals to the male that she is ready to mate when she rises closer to the surface of the water. The male follows her, opening his bag. The female's ovipositor expands, she inserts it into the opening of the pouch and spawns directly into the pouch of the male. He fertilizes her along the way.
The number of fertilized eggs largely depends on the size of the male - a large male can fit more eggs in his bag. Small tropical species of seahorses produce up to 60 eggs, large species more than five hundred. Sometimes seahorses form stable pairs that do not break up throughout the life of two individuals. Then mating takes place without rituals - the female simply lays eggs in the male's bag.
Four weeks later, the male begins to release fry from the bag - this process is similar to “shooting”: the bag expands and many fry quickly fly to freedom. To do this, the male swims out to an open area, where the current is the strongest - so the fry will spread over a wide area. Parents are not interested in the further fate of small seahorses.
Natural enemies of the seahorse
The seahorse is a master of disguise and a secret lifestyle. Due to this, the seahorse has very few enemies that would purposefully hunt this fish.
Sometimes seahorses become food for the following creatures:
- large shrimp feast on small seahorses, cubs and caviar;
- crabs are enemies of seahorses both under water and on land. Sometimes seahorses cannot hold on to algae during a storm, which is why they are washed ashore, where they become prey for crabs;
- lives in corals and anemones, where seahorses are often found;
- can simply eat everything in its path, and seahorses accidentally fall into its diet.
Interesting fact: Undigested seahorses have been found in their stomachs.
Seahorses are not capable of self-defense, they do not know how to flee. Even the most "fast" subspecies of speed will not be enough to get away from the pursuit. But seahorses are not purposefully hunted, as most of them are covered with sharp chitinous needles and growths.
Population and species status
Most seahorse species are on the edge. Data on the number of species is controversial: some scientists identify 32 species, others - more than 50. However, 30 species of seahorses are close to extinction.
The reasons for the disappearance of seahorses are different. There include:
- mass capture of seahorses as a souvenir;
- capture of seahorses as delicacies;
- environmental pollution;
- changing of the climate.
Seahorses are extremely susceptible to stress - the slightest change in the ecology of their habitat leads seahorses to death. Pollution of the world's oceans decimates the population of not only seahorses, but also many other fish.
Interesting fact: Sometimes a seahorse may choose a female that is not yet ready to mate. Then he still conducts all the rituals, but as a result, mating does not occur, and then he is looking for a new partner.
Seahorse protection
Most species of seahorses are listed in. The status of a protected species was slowly obtained by seahorses, since it is extremely difficult to fix the number of these fish. Long-snouted seahorses were the first to be listed in the Red Book - it was in 1994. Conservation of seahorses is hampered by the fact that seahorses die from severe stress. They cannot be relocated to new territories, it is difficult to breed in aquariums and home water parks.
The main measures taken to protect skates are as follows:
- prohibition of catching seahorses - it is classified as poaching;
- creation of protected areas where large flocks of seahorses are located;
- stimulation of fertility due to artificial feeding of seahorses in the wild.
The measures are not very effective, as the trapping of seahorses is still allowed and very active in countries and regions. So far, the population is saved by the fecundity of these fish - out of a hundred eggs, only one individual survives to adulthood, but this is a record number among most tropical fish.
Sea Horse- and an animal. They are distinguished by a wide variety of shapes, colors and sizes, being one of the most striking species of fish. It remains to be hoped that measures to protect seahorses will bear fruit, and these fish will continue to exist safely in the expanses of the world's oceans.
Seahorse (lat. Hippocampus) is a small sea fish of the sea needle family. This fish swims slowly in an upright position, twisting its tail forward to capture algae while its watchful eyes help it search for food and avoid danger.
Seahorses are among the popular pets that are kept in aquariums. If an aquarium with these fish is installed in any public place, they immediately attract the attention of visitors. People flock to watch these exquisite fish soaring in the aquarium. Sometimes seahorses meet and connect with their tails. Then, just as elegantly, they unwind their tails and calmly disperse in different directions.
These small marine fish tend to live along the shore, among seaweed and other plants. They have only one mating partner. The distance they travel does not exceed a few meters. The body length of a seahorse ranges from 4 to 30 cm, and it continues to grow throughout the 4 years of its life.
The genus of seahorses is represented by 32 species: the pygmy seahorse (Atlantic species, smaller than other species), the brown seahorse that lives in Europe, the large brown or blackish seahorse that lives in the Pacific Ocean, and the medium (in size) seahorse that lives in Australian waters.
The seahorse is a unique creature.
From above, the body of the seahorse is covered with a bony shell that protects it from dangers. This shell is so hard that you can't crush a dry, dead horse with your hands. Its robust skeleton makes the seahorse unattractive to predators, so this fish is usually left untouched except by a large land crab that can digest it.
The female seahorse is completely immersed in this protective shell. The body of the male is also enclosed in it, with the exception of the lower part of the body. The carapace is often covered with numerous bone rings.
The uniqueness of the seahorse among fish lies in the fact that its head is located at right angles to the body. When a seahorse swims, its body remains upright. The seahorse's head can move up or down, but it cannot turn sideways. The inability to move the head in different directions in other creatures would probably cause problems, but the Creator in His wisdom designed the seahorse in such a way that its eyes move and rotate independently of each other, while simultaneously observing what is happening in different directions from it.
The seahorse uses its fins to swim vertically. It dives and rises, changing the volume of gas inside its swim bladder. If the swim bladder is damaged and even a small amount of gas is lost, then the seahorse sinks to the bottom and lies helplessly until death.
Male gives birth to babies!
Perhaps the most incredible (if not strange) feature of the seahorse is that the male gives birth to the young. Scientists became aware of this unusual phenomenon only in the last century.
At the very base of the abdomen of the male seahorse (where there is no protective shell) there is a large leathery pocket and a slit-like opening.
During the mating season, the male swims up to the female, both fish cling to each other, and at this moment the male opens his pocket wide, and the female throws several eggs into it. After some time, this ceremony is repeated, and again the “newlywed” bag is replenished with several eggs, which are fertilized at the moment they get there.
The female lays eggs in the pocket until it is completely full (it can contain more than 600 eggs). The inner lining of the pocket becomes like a sponge, filled with blood vessels that play a role in nourishing the eggs. This is an unusual feature of the male seahorse! When the laying of eggs is completed, the future father sails away with his inflated pocket, being a kind of living stroller for the cubs.
After one or two months, the male gives birth to tiny babies - an exact copy of adults. A miniature addition to the family is squeezed out through the hole until the bag is completely empty. Sometimes the male experiences very strong labor pains in order to push the last cub out. The birth of cute babies is an amazing sight, but for a male, the process of childbirth is very exhausting. Seahorses born are not called "sea stallions", but simply "babies".
Today, seahorses are on the verge of extinction - their population is rapidly declining. 30 species of skate fish out of 32 known to science are listed in the Red Book. There are many reasons for this, one of them is the massive capture of skates off the coast of Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and the Philippines. The exotic appearance of the fish doomed them to people using them as souvenirs and gifts. For the sake of beauty, their tail is artificially bent so as to give the body the shape of the letter S. In fact, such types of fish do not exist in nature - this is a whim of man. Saves skates from extinction only great fertility: some species give birth to more than a thousand babies at a time. A separate point in the destruction of the seahorse population is the fact that the taste of these fish is appreciated by gourmets. According to them, the liver and eyes of seahorses are quite tasty, although they have laxative properties. The dish is served with a fig leaf and costs as much as $800 per serving at the most expensive seaside restaurants.
(Photo from http://mote.org)
Scientific classification:
Kingdom: Animals
Type of: Chordates
Superclass: Fish
Class: Bony fish
Subclass: Ray-finned fish
Detachment: Acicular
Family: Needle
Genus