Seahorses are very special fishes, and so exiting findings during a dive. The divers signal alone is fun, because it involves your entire body. Usually you would use one or two hands to signal what you found, but for a seahorse you act as if you were riding a horse – quite a challenge with torch and camera in your hands! You can keep it easy of course.
ID under water is easy, because we just say ‘seahorse’. On land ID is more problematic, because there are two species of seahorses in Singapore, and they look similar. Hippocampus kuda lives in brackish waters. Both are quite variable in color, everything between dark brown to bright yellow is possible. The striped tail should clearly point towards tiger-tailed seahorse I guess. Not sure if I’ve ever seen a H. kuda, they have less spiny backs.
For a little moment I thought the systematic of seahorses is mega simple: They are all in the same genus! 46 Species of Hippocampus. Then I realized there are pigmy seahorses, and who heard that before, pigmy pipehorses. They share the same family, Syngnathidae (with the other members, Pipefish & sea dragons). Regular and pigmy seahorses are in the subfamily Hippocampinae and all share the same genus. Pipehorses are somehow a thing between seahorse and pipefish (so they are also called pygmy pipedragon, and I guess everything with either sea, pipe, horse or dragon would make sense?!) At the moment is is not clear whether to place these seahorsepipedragons in the subfamily of seahorses, pipefish (Syngnathinae, together with those seadragons) or in a separate one. Can’t wait to have a closer look at the pipefishes, there are some 200 species around).
The most amazing fact of seahorses is well known: Males get kind of pregnant, or better they keep the fertilized eggs in a pouch, and give birth. The larvae look like adults, but they swim for a while like plankton. The theory is, that they can reproduce faster, because the female can produce eggs while the males takes care of the last batch. So the males are more or less permanently pregnant.
What was new to me, and totally goes well with the common name Tiger Tail Seahorse, is that they make sounds. They make click sounds when feeding, and they growl when in trouble. This is not limited to tiger-tails, but I like the fact that I found while writing about them. The feeding click also comes with purring, how cool is that?! These are tiger-tailed, tiger-sound seahorses!
I never heard any sound while diving with seahorses, maybe because they are too small, maybe because they aren’t feeding while I watch, or just because I didn’t expect a sound?
While seahorses are bony and not threatened by many predators, humans do their best to destroy their habitat, catch them for aquariums and use them in traditional medicine. Here they are said to cure asthma, skin infections, impotence. Not to be confused with tiger, which cures rheumatism and arthritis, along with erectile dysfunction, or rhino (also virility, cancer, fever, liver). And just a side note, the linked article quotes two researchers with remarkable names. One is Kaatz, which is very similar to Katze, German for cat (tiger!). The other one is J. Fish, which sound very similar to fish (Hippocampus is a mythological creature and means ‘horse-fish-monster’).
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