Meet Seahorse!

Greetings! I'd like to introduce you to this weeks odd animal, the seahorse. As many of you are aware, seahorses are very strange creatures. They can be found mostly in shallow warm sea grass beds, swimming about upright, propelling themselves forward with their dorsal fins (that can beat 35 times a second) and steering with their pectoral fins. To keep from being swept away in the currents they anchor themselves by wrapping their prehensile tails like a coil around seaweed or soft coral. Seahorses can use each eye independently, making it easy to hunt for prey without moving. This helps them catch the plankton and small fish that they feed on. They eat constantly in order to stay alive because they have no stomach in their digestive systems.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about seahorses is the way in which they mate. Seahorses court one another and mate usually under a full moon, twirling in a sort of dance in which they turn different colors and create music. And in the most unique role reversal, the male seahorse is impregnated by the female. He gives birth to nearly 50 fully developed tiny seahorses.