Short-snouted Seahorse

• It is the male, not the female, that carries the fertilised eggs in a specialised brood pouch.
• For all its slowness it is an extremely effective predator, with a strike success rate close to 90%.
• Hard data on this species is limited; many figures come from comparisons across the genus Hippocampus.
• The pregnancy is the male's, and that is no metaphor: the female deposits her eggs in a brood pouch on the male, where they are fertilised and where he nourishes and oxygenates them until he gives birth to fully formed young.
• That pouch changes its structure during gestation to ease the exchange of gases and nutrients between father and embryos, a workings comparable to that of a placenta.
• It forms pairs that last through the breeding season and greet each other every morning with a ritual courtship.
• It swims poorly and slowly, propelling itself with a dorsal fin that beats up to 35 times per second, and spends most of its time clinging to a stem with its prehensile tail.
• It has no stomach: food passes through its digestive tract very quickly, so it must eat almost continuously.
• The entire genus Hippocampus is on Appendix II of CITES, which regulates its international trade.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - bony skeleton, scaleless (external bony plates)

Habitat & environment

Seagrass meadows and vegetated bottoms of the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic

Birth weight

A tiny young released from the male's brood pouch; no precise size found for this particular species

Size at birth

Tiny at birth (across the genus Hippocampus, from 2 mm to 16 mm depending on the species)

Sexual maturity

4 months to a year, depending on which species in the genus is taken as reference

Gestation / incubation

14-28 days of gestation in the male's brood pouch (a figure for the genus)

Litter / clutch size

Up to several hundred young per litter (a figure for the genus; it varies greatly by species)

Sources consulted: MarineBio (Pacific seahorse, datos comparativos de género); Animal Diversity Web (género Hippocampus); Florida Museum of Natural History; nota: datos específicos de H. hippocampus limitados en fuentes consultadas, complementados con referencias de género