Sea Horses

By Romama Aung

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Contents

Introduction 3Appearance 4-5Movement 6Habitat 7Diet 8Family 9References 10Glossary 11

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Introduction

There are millions of different sea animals in the GIANT ocean; Whales, Dolphins, Jellyfish, Sea lions and tropical fish.

In this report you will find out all about a whole new different animal...The Sea Horse.

Where does it live?What does it eat?How does it catch its prey?What are its predators?

Find out more facts just turn over to the next page and you’ll find anything about a sea horse.

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AppearanceSea horses are fish. They live in water, breath through gills and have a swim bladder. They also have a neck and snout that points down.

Sea horses can change colour very quickly and match any surroundings in which it finds itself. They have been known to turn bright red to match floating debris.

Sea horses have excellent eye sight and their eyes are able to move independently on either side of their head. This means they can look backwards and forwards at the same time! This is particularly useful as they hunt for food by sight. Sea horses have long thin snouts allowing them to probe into nocks and crannies for food. When they find food they suck it up through their snouts like a vacuum cleaner. They are not able to chew and

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have to disintegrate the food as they eat it. They don’t have any teeth or a stomach so they have to eat constantly due to the fast process of digestion.

Movement5

Their bodies are made up of hard external bony plates that are fused together with a fleshy covering. They do not have scales. Sea horses have a prehensile tail, to grip onto eel grass and other weeds and prevents them by being washed away by strong currents and waves. Sea horses are poor swimmers. They rely on their dorsal fin that beats at 30-70 times per second to propel it also.

Habitat6

Seahorses live in shallow weedy areas especially eel grass in the winter, they move into the deeper waters to escape rough weather. Sea horses are mostly found in the tropical oceans of the sea. They usually live in coral reefs. They also live in grass beds and mud slopes, rocks and kelp. Seahorses live in the North and South of America.

Four sea horse species live in the south and north of America, and two species live that live in the European coastal waters. The rest of the species all live in the Indian Ocean and the western of the Pacific Ocean.

Reproduction 7

The male sea horses are the ones that carry their eggs. He will have them in his body for up to 45 days and they will emerge fully-grown. Less than 1% of all young survive to the age of maturity. This could be why the female deposits up to 1500 eggs during mating process.

Diet 8

Seahorses eat a lot of different food. some of them are Mysis shrimp, brine shrimp and other small crustacean.

Baby sea horses eat about 3,000 bits of food every day. Adults eat up to 50 times a day.

FamilyThere are more than 40 species of seahorses...

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- Common seahorses - Big belly seahorses - Pygmy seahorses- Pacific sea horses- Leafy sea dragon - Pipe fish

But the leafy sea dragon and weedy sea dragon is related to sea horses.

Predators- Crabs

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- Vicious fish

- Humans : Humans are predators to

them because Chinese use them to make medicine.

ConclusionFrom this report you now know most of the facts about sea horses.

We can help them by...

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- Don’t make medicine out of them.- Don’t fish too much fish instead you

can Fish once or twice a week.

There are lots of ways to help the sea horses.

Refences

Websites

- www.wikipedia.com- www.marinelife.about.com- www.wikianswers.com

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Books-Sea horses -Sea horses life

Glossary

Prehensile tail - a curved tail that can hook on to something.

External bony plates - some thing that goes all around the body.

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Crustacean- something that has a hard shell

Species- lots of types of animals

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