Have you ever been in an aquarium and attracted by those strange and interesting sea creatures?Among them, the seahorse is undoubtedly the most striking one. They have a unique form, like small sea knights, freely moving through the underwater world. Today, let's walk into the world of seahorses and learn about these adorable sea creatures.
First of all, we need to understand that the distended seahorse, also known as the large-bellied seahorse, is one of the species of seahorses of the family Hippocampus of the order Acanthus of the class Radial-finned fishes, and is the largest of all known seahorses, distributed in the waters of Australia and New Zealand in the southwest Pacific region, and can inhabit at depths of up to 109 meters. It inhabits the reef area, swims with the seagrass, and is carnivorous and feeds on small insects and shrimps.
Next, let's take a look at the crowned seahorse. The crowned seahorse belongs to the family of sea dragons, the genus Hippocampus. Small, flattened laterally, raised back, heptagonal trunk, convex abdomen;tail tapering backwards, quadrangular, curly;The head and body axes are slightly right-angled;The crown of the head is particularly tall, about the length of the snout;There are 4 small protrusions at the top of the crown, without a head;The kiss is slender, and there is no small protrusion at the back of the kiss;Eyes large, lateral;The interocular septum ** is concave, with 1 supraorbital protrusion on each side;The nostrils are located near the front of the eyes;Mouth small, anterior;The gill aperture is small and located above the operculum;The body is scaleless, and the whole body is covered with bone rings;The body is light brown with dark markings, sometimes black-brown, and the dorsal fin also has dark longitudinal bands.
The crowned hippocampus is a small, warm-water fish that lives in shallow waters. The swimming ability is not strong, and it mainly relies on the pectoral fin, dorsal fin and fin to swing with each other. The tail has the ability to curl and wrap around seaweed and other floating objects. It mainly feeds on the barnacle larvae of copepods and cranopods, and the larvae and adults of shrimps. It is found along the shallow coast from Hokkaido to Kyushu and southern Korea in JapanIt is mainly distributed in the Bohai Sea in China, and is rare in the Yellow Sea.
Let's take a look at the Japanese seahorse. The Japanese seahorse also belongs to the family of sea dragons, the genus Hippocampus. The body is small, flattened on the sides, and the abdomen is prominent;The small spines on the head and the upper spines on the body ring are well developed;The crown is short and has obtuse spines that do not protrude;The trunk is heptagonal, and the tail is quadrangular and curly;snout tubular and very short, shorter than the back of the eye and the head;The eyes are medium-large, lateral and high;The interocular septum is narrow and slightly concave;The nostrils are small, 2 on each side;The mouth is small, end-positioned, and slightly semicircular when the mouth is opened;Toothless;The operculum is prominent, smooth and not radial;The body is scaleless, and the whole body is covered with bone rings;The body is dark brown, with markings on the snout and sides of the head. The Japanese seahorse is a warm-temperate fish that prefers to inhabit coastal areas with gravel substrates, and is commonly found in seaweed clumps in the mid-tide to low-tide lines along the coast and inner bays. The growth rate is slower. The staple food is copepods, amphipods, cladhorns, shrimp and other live bait. It is found in waters from Mannar Bay, India, to the northern part of Korea and Honshu, Japan.
Finally, let's introduce the tube hippocampus. The tube hippocampus is a member of the family Hippocampus, a genus of hippocampus. Large;The body is flattened on the sides, high, the small spines on the head are well developed, the upper spines on the body are short, blunt and thick, and the abdomen is prominent;The crown of the head is low, with 5 short blunt and coarse spines at the apex, the body is heptagonal in the part, and the tail is quadrangular and curlyThe snout is elongated, tubular in shape, the snout length is equal to the length of the head behind the eyes, the eyes are small, lateral and high;The interocular septum is slightly concave, smaller than the diameter of the eye, with 2 nostrils on each side;Mouth small, anterior, edentulous;Operculum convex, with radial ridges;The gill aperture is small and dorsal to the cephalad;The body has no scales, and it is all covered by bone rings;The body is pale yellowish-brown, with small dark spots and small white spots on the head and sides of the body, black longitudinal markings on the dorsal fin, and pale and pectoral fins.
Seahorses inhabit areas where algae or seagrass are abundant, are highly adaptable, slightly tolerant of changes in salinity, often wrap their tails around seagrass, corals or rocks, have weak swimming ability, and their body color changes with the environment. It is carnivorous and feeds on invertebrates. It is found in the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan, and some Pacific islands, including HawaiiIt is also found on the east coast of Africa, from Tanzania to South Africa.
That's it for a few common seahorse breeds. Each species of seahorse has its own unique morphological characteristics and living habits, and they live freely in the underwater world, showing us the wonder and mystery of the ocean. I hope that through this article, you can have a deeper understanding and understanding of seahorses, and I hope you can love and protect our marine environment even more.