In the endless ocean, a seahorse daddy stayed quietly behind a clump of coral, suddenly! It constantly contracted the "nursery bag" in the abdomen, and saw a clump of baby seahorses continuously ejecting from it, and it didn't take long for thousands of baby seahorses around to fly all over the sky, all of them were miniature versions of hippocampus dads.
The hippocampus gives birth to a baby hippocampus
This decompressed-looking picture is the scene of Daddy Seahorse giving birth. Of all animals, more than 99.9% rely on females to complete the important task of nurturing life, with the exception of seahorses, which are males for the task of producing offspring.
Perhaps the biggest question for many people is, why is the seahorse so peculiar? Why does the species rely on males to produce offspring? So what is the task of the female seahorse? Without further ado, it is still the old rule, let's first understand the basic knowledge of hippocampus, and solve these questions step by step.
It can give birth to thousands of cubs at a time
海马可不是“马”
The seahorse belongs to the chordate phylum, a very small marine animal that lives in the ocean. Although there is a word "horse" in the name of the seahorse, people are not horses, but fish, and it is estimated that many people may not associate seahorses with fish with peculiar appearances.
According to molecular biologists, the seahorse and tuna are more closely related than salmon and tuna from genetic sequencing results. As the saying goes, "Fish must not look good", seahorses are indeed fish.
Seahorse is the collective name of several small species of warm sea fish in the sea dragon family, so the seahorse is a small fish in the ocean, since the seahorse is a fish, why is it called "seahorse"? In fact, this is directly related to its appearance.
Male hippocampus
The most prominent feature of the seahorse's shape is its head, which looks like a horse, so it is called "seahorse". In fact, if you look closely, the seahorse does have the characteristics of fish, such as the seahorse has fins on its back and gills on its head, but its appearance is very different from other fish.
The adult hippocampus is relatively small, usually only about 15-30 cm long, and its body is composed of 10-12 bone rings.
海马身体上奇特部位有哪些
In addition to the head of the seahorse that looks like a horse, there are many parts of the body that are very peculiar, such as the following.
Female seahorse
The tail is slender and quadrangular, which is relatively rare in animals, and the hippocampus tail can be rolled up anytime and anywhere, often in a curl state, and the tail length can account for almost half of the total length of the body.
The belly of the seahorse is very special and is convex, so it seems that their belly is relatively full and bulging, giving people the feeling that they are always full.
The mouth of the fish can be closed freely, but the seahorse cannot, their mouth cannot be opened and closed, just like the "straw", so when eating, they can only suck some small animals in the water, and they can't eat it when they are larger.
The seahorse has a long tail
The seahorse has two large watery eyes that can be rotated upward and down, left and right, or back and forth, respectively, just like a chameleon, making its vision more flexible and wider.
为何海马进化的跟其他鱼类不一样
Most of the other features of the seahorse have been degraded except for a few fish features, so why are the appearance characteristics so different from other fish?
Why did a seahorse evolve from a fish to such a unique animal that can walk upright? This has become one of the major events in the research of scientists, and many relevant personnel have studied this in depth and found important reasons.
Nice little seahorse
In 2009, a team of researchers in Australia published a paper on the hippocampus. The researchers found sea dragons that were particularly similar in appearance to the hippocampus, and determined their kinship in the genetic comparison between the two, thus speculating that the sea dragon and the seahorse diverged in the late Oligocene, about 25 million years ago.
That is to say, 25 million years ago, a lot of changes occurred in the ocean, so that upright gene mutations produced a great competitive advantage, and in order to adapt to environmental changes, the upright swimming seahorse was differentiated.
Relevant researchers also found that the origin of sea dragons and the origin of seahorses are the same, both in Australian waters, so as long as you find out what changed in Australian waters at that time, you can figure out the reason.
Sea dragon diagram
The study finally found that at that time, there were many shallow areas in this sea area due to the movement of the earth's crust, which was conducive to the growth of seagrass and other plants, and a large number of seagrass grew out coupled with surges that made it very difficult for fish to swim, and in this wavering surge, it was much safer if you could catch seagrass by relying on something.
Therefore, in order to adapt to the environment, the seahorse evolved a long tail, which can be used to wrap the water grass at any time, fix its body, and is not easy to be taken away by the surge, which makes the seahorse destined to live a life of "waiting for the rabbit", so the seahorse body has evolved a variety of characteristics suitable for its survival.
The hippocampus changes color with the coral
For example, the seahorse body is erected in the same direction as the seagrass, and its own color changes with the color of the coral, and these camouflage techniques evolved are conducive to the survival of the seahorse.
海马为何是雄性孕育后代
Seahorses are the only animals on Earth that produce offspring from males, with the exception of animals.
Although the offspring are conceived by the male, the eggs are provided by the female hippocampus, and the entire development process is completed in the male hippocampus, and finally the baby seahorse comes out of the belly of the male hippocampus.
Why do hippos rely on male hippocampals to produce offspring? The main reasons are as follows.
Hidden inside coral
- Male seahorses have "nursery bags"
Compared with female hippocampuses, male seahorses have hatching sacs on the front or sides of their bodies, also called "nursery bags", but females do not, so the burden of breeding life and reproduction falls on male seahorses.
Every year from May to August is the season for seahorse reproduction, at this time the female seahorse will look for a suitable mate, once the two are satisfied with each other, the female seahorse will lay all the eggs in the male seahorse's "nursery bag", and the task of breeding offspring is all handed over to the hippocampus father.
After the male seahorse has hatched for 45-60 days, it is time to give birth to a baby hippocampus, like sharks, the baby seahorse is born in full form, and the male seahorse can give birth to hundreds to thousands of baby seahorses at a time.
A herd of seahorses
- Hippocampal pups have low survival rates in order to increase fertility
However, the survival rate of seahorse cubs is very low, about 45 in 1,000 probability of safe survival, which shows that the seahorse fertility rate is very low, in order to maintain the normal number of the population, the seahorse can only reproduce as many offspring as possible to increase the number of young seahorses.
In order for the female seahorse to have enough time to lay eggs, the task of hatching and giving birth is given to the male seahorse, and when the father of the hippocampus successfully gives birth to the first seahorse baby, he can continue to hatch the second child, which can effectively increase the number of hippocampus babies, thereby increasing the size of the entire population.
Tail rolled up
Therefore, seahorses can only use a large number of breeding to make up for the low survival rate of hippocampal babies and ensure the number of their own population, which is the second reason why hippocampal cubs are born by male hippocampuses.
文章总结语
Animals and plants in nature, in order to survive and ensure the number of species, have a unique set of ability to reproduce.
Perched on aquatic plants
For example, seahorses have "nursery bags" because they rely on males to hatch and give birth to offspring, dandelions grow fluttering seeds in order to make the wind blow seeds... These peculiar ways of breeding make one have to marvel at the magic of nature.