Januari 03, 2017
this is a pygmy seahorse. it's one of the smallestspecies of seahorses in the world, smallerthan a paper clip. camouflage is criticalto their survival. it's how they hidefrom predators. the seahorses aretoo small and too fragile to make it on their own. so unless they find a placethat they fit in perfectly, they'll die.
so the pygmy seahorses spendtheir entire adult lives on a type of coralcalled a sea fan. orange pygmy seahorseslive on orange sea fans. purple seahorses liveon purple sea fans. but here's the mystery. do they search for a coralthat matches their color, or do they change theircolor to match the coral? to explore thatquestion, you have to watch the processunfold, and no one
had ever done thatuntil this year. biologists wentto the philippines and collected a mating pairof orange pygmy seahorses from a sea fan 80feet below the surface. they rushed them back to thecalifornia academy of sciences in san francisco, and there, forthe first time in an aquarium, the pygmy seahorses survived. the scientists watched themale and female seahorses performing theirdaily courtship dance.
they saw baby seahorses pop outof their father's brood pouch. the babies all startedout a dull brown color. so scientistswanted to know, what would happen if theyprovided a purple sea fan to the offspringof orange seahorses? and they got their answer. the babies turned purple. they grew calcifiedbumps called tubercles to match the coral's texture.
and there, they stayed. we humans tend to think ofwho we are as mostly fixed. but in the ocean,identity can be a fluid and mysterious thing.
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