One of the most charming looking fishes is the seahorse, which is truly a fish. They have some fascinating living habits.
Seahorses are monogamous and stay with one partner for their entire lives. They perform a greeting dance to reaffirm their pledge to each other every morning. If a partner dies, it takes a long time before they search for a new partner.
The male seahorse becomes pregnant and nourishes the young until they are born. Once the young are born, parental care ends and the baby seahorse must fend for themselves. The new seahorse faces many dangers, it must protect itself from predators and if it mistakenly eats a small air bubble thinking it’s food, it will die.
Seahorses are not very agile and rely on camouflage for protection. They can rapidly change the colour of their bodies to blend into whatever background they are in at the time.
Unfortunately, these wonderful little horselike fish are becoming an endangered species. Asian countries use them for food, medicine and aphrodisiacs and the curio and aquarium market is also steadily growing. China alone consumes 6 million seahorses a year.
A seahorse rarely lives more than three years, but with its popularity as a food and medicine, not many will live that long.