Seahorses can be many different colors such as white, yellow, red, brown, black, gray, spotted, or banded. They also have many different parts to them.. They have a head like a horse, snout like an aardvark, spines like a puffer fish, tail like a monkey, pouch like a kangaroo, eyes like a lizard, armor plated body like a stegosaurs, the ability to change colors like a chameleon, and to wrap their tails around things that surround them to help them from washing away in the oceans current. They have binocular eyes that can see their microscopic prey.

 

The armor plated body helps protect them. Seahorses have no teeth, they use there long snout to suck up there food and then swallow it whole. They do rather well in their ecosystem. This is because they have a lot of places that they can hide when they need to get away from their predators. And because there’s plenty of food so they don’t have to worry about going without. In their ecosystem they have a lot of places where they can live like sponges and such.

 

Seahorses are found mainly in pairs on coral reefs, sponge gardens, kelp, floating objects, sea grass beds, and man grove habitats. You can find them in these places like tropical and subtropical coastal and reef waters all over Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. Over the last 10 years the seahorse population has declined over twenty percent. They are now under threatened or vulnerable species. The reason the seahorse population is decreasing is because of all the fisherman or collectors that take them. I read that over 400 seahorses are taken out of the ocean every day.

 

So pretty soon there’s not going to be anymore. Shrimp is food for seahorses, and because there are seahorses crab, skates, rays, and tuna all have food. Seahorse’s predators are crab, tuna, skates, and rays. One way they avoid being eaten is because their eyes are like lizards they can have one looking left and one looking right, so one can be looking for food while the other is keeping a look out for their predators.

 

Another way is by camouflaging themselves to match their surroundings so that their predators cannot find them. The biggest thing that stood out to me while I was researching my animal is how the males take care and help the young not the female. Another is how they can camouflage themselves faster than a blink of an eye. I learned that seahorses have many different parts to them a lot of like other animals, such as the snout, its much like an aardvark's snout. I also learned that they can be several different colors and that they wrap their tail around objects around them to help them to stay in one spot because they're so little, or to just sit and rest without having the ocean push them somewhere else.

 

Author: Shayna W.

Published: 02/2009

 

Sources: sciencedaily.com worldwildlife.com Seahorses: Book Photo Credit: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3315/3336796685_f0a9280655.jpg?v=0