If you\u2019re a visitor looking for a moment of Zen, stop by the Museum\u2019s Animals of the Eelgrass exhibit (NEC 1st floor) and check out the lined seahorses, now back on display after a tank refresh. Be patient as you look for them. They\u2019re not all that small (2-4 inches) but they can be surprisingly difficult to find.<\/p>\n
Fast Facts<\/strong><\/p>\n Lined seahorses are one of two species (along with longsnout seahorses) native to North Carolina waters and are found in the Atlantic Ocean from Cape Cod in the north to Argentina in the south as well as west in the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n They\u2019re weak (but entertaining) swimmers that use camouflage as a primary defense against predators, but their ability to change color and their namesake lines serve them well as they cling to aquatic vegetation including mangroves, seagrasses, sponges, corals, and floating sargassum.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t have scales like other fish (yes, they are a type of fish) but have an exoskeleton covered in hard, bony plates that serve as a deterrent to predators, while remaining flexible enough to allow its prehensile tail to cling to objects in their environment.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t have teeth, so they just suction up their food \u2014 small shrimp, very small fish and plankton \u2014 and swallow it whole.<\/p>\n Probably the most astounding fact is that males carry and birth the babies. First the female transfers between 250-650 eggs to the brood pouch of the male who then seals and fertilizes the eggs. After around three weeks the embryos hatch inside the pouch but stay until they can swim, then the male releases the baby seahorses into the surrounding water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":120134,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/120133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/120133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120136,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/120133\/revisions\/120136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}