I have Always Loved Seahorses

I Have Always Loved Seahorses

We went on a tour of the Seahorse farm.   It was fun to learn a little about them.

These are the tiny shrimp that we fed the baby seahorses with. 

These are young seahorses.  Not as tiny as the baby ones that were only about 1/2 inch long.  We couldn't take pictures of the babies. 

Seahorses mate for life.  It was fun to see them holding tails like the ones in the top left corner.

These are a little larger seahorses.  The seahorse is the only animal that the males carry the babies and give birth to them.  The female deposits about 600 eggs in the male's pouch and then she takes off and leaves him to do the work.  After about a month the male gives birth to about 600 babies.  It takes him about 2 minutes to give birth to all of them.  After birth the babies are on their own and have to get their own food. After about 2 hours the female deposits her eggs again and the process starts again.  Fascinating!

I even got to hold a seahorse!  Or,  I should say the seahorse held on to my finger with its tail.

It was quite fun!

This is a better picture of the seahorse holding on to my finger. 

This is a strange orange fish that stays very still, pretending to be a rock until food swims close by. 

The striped fish isn't a seahorse, but he is interesting..