I just don’t get it. How can our society act so goddamned normal about seahorses. How can anybody so casually accept that that’s a fish???
This is one of nature’s most anatomically perverse of all beasts. A FISH, like a carp or a bass or a beta is a fish, but it bent its body straight up only to bend its head permanently back down. It stretched its skull into a pipe. It tapered its tail like a lizard, specifically like a chameleon. It can also move its eyes independently by the way, you know, like a chameleon. Fun fact, it can change color to express its mood, like you know whatever does that. It doesn’t properly swim anymore. It buzzes its few remaining fins like an insect’s wings to float itself around at a snail’s pace. It lives its whole life clinging to coral branches or seaweed, which means it decided to become a “tree dweller” in an environment where gravity didn’t even matter anyway. The males get pregnant. They make noises at each other by rubbing some of their neck bones together. Every day, EVERY DAY a mated pair does a little dance and a little neck bone song so they remember which two seahorses they were. They’re a beautiful precious obscenity. Nothing so adorable ever made such a strong case against a logical creator.
They have as little skin and meat as they could get away with. Their skeleton is almost all they are.
This thing is one of the most successful hunters on the planet. Because their mouth is fused shut, except for the tip, they can create a powerful suction force in front of that one little opening in order to draw in prey.
Lions have a 20-30% success rate on their hunts, depending on daytime and if they’re in a group. Great white sharks, anywhere from 40% to 80%, depending on the size and skill of the individual. Dragonflies, which are one of the most successful terrestrial hunters, can hit about 80-85%. Seahorses? 90% success rate, sometimes more. Only a fraction of their prey escapes that powerful vacuum. They’re incredibly precise.
If you touch them, they feel hard, because of the skeleton underneath their skin. Their tails are being studied to make coiling bridges, because of how strong that interlocked structure is. Different species range in size from over a foot long, to barely an inch.
Behold: not just a fish, but a wildly successful predator!
horsey
don’t forget their majestic cousins the sea dragons! these are the leafy and weedy sea dragons
and the newest seahorse family member, discovered in 2015, the ruby sea dragon ❤️
Yeah that’s when someone tried to straighten the seahorse back out and it still didn’t look right. The more they bent and mushed it in their hands to look like a fish again the worse they fucked it up until finally they just left it and walked off and hoped nobody would ask who did this
(I love them so much)
Syngnathiformes my beloved. Always happy to see my favorite weird fishes get appreciated.
And if you want to expand your horizons on the order, may I suggest trumpetfishes
This has to be my alltime favorite image of a banded pipefish. Thank you so much!!
As thanks let me gift you this image of an absolute 34cm unit of a spiny seahorse wich was caught in the channel south of england ( and later released healthily ) in 2015.
