10 Awesome Facts About The African Seahorse

1. The Seahorse shares the same name with a part of the human brain called the Hippocampus. The Hippocampus is the Latin name of the Seahorse it means and as such is the generic name of all 47 species of the Seahorse… Talk about a big extended family!

2.The size of the Seahorse varies greatly from as low as 1.5cm to over 14 inches. And their appearance varies greatly even from members of the same species.

3.Seahorses feed constantly.They feed on plankton and smallcrustaceans.They do not have a stomach, so food passes through their bodies very quickly digesting as it goes , and they need to eat nearly constantly. The baby Seahorse called a fry eats more than 3000 times daily!

4. Imagine being able to look upwards and downwards at the same time, pretty impossible for a human,but the Seahorse can! The eyes of the sea horse can function independent of the other being able to look at two different directions at the same time.

5. In actual facts the Seahorse is actually a type of fish only named a sea horse because it looks like the horse. It’s skeleton is unlike most fishes, on the surface of its body, that is… The sea horse possesses an exo skeleton. Also unlike most fishes, the sea horse lacks scales. It only possesses a thin flesh stretched out on its exo skeleton.

6. The male Seahorse gets pregnant! The Seahorse belongs to a very elite group of animals that receive the female eggs, fertilizes them and actually undergo labour bringing forth as much as 1000 offsprings. Pregnancy last for 4 weeks and contractions last up to 12 hours.

7. Like chameleons, Seahorses can change colour. The seahorse escapes the attention of predators by developing long skin filaments and camouflage colouration to match the marine weed in which it lives. Within a matter of seconds it can changefrom grey or black to bright orange, vivid yellow or even deep plum..

8. Seahorses are bad swimmers.

Although they are fish,seahorses are not great swimmers. In fact, they Seahorses prefer to rest in one area, sometimes holding on to the same coral or seaweed for days. They beat their fins very quickly, up to 50 times a second, but they do not move quickly . with speed as low as 5ft per hour! They are very manueverable, however – and able to move up,down, forward or backward.

9. Seahorses are monogamous in nature . They meet first thing in the morning to reinforce their pair bonding with an elaborate courtship display. The female meets the male in his territory and as they approach each other, they change colour.The male circles around the female and the pair often spiral around an object.This display can last for up to an hour. Once over the female goes back to her territory, and revisit the next day.

10. Seahorses face possible extinction as more than 15 million of them are captured yearly for Chinese tradomedical medicines.