Pygmy Seahorses: Masters of Camouflage | Deep Look

Tiny and delicate, pygmy seahorses survive by attaching to vibrant corals where they become nearly invisible to both predators and researchers. Now, biologists at the California Academy of Sciences have successfully bred them in captivity for the first time. Finally, they're able to study the seahorses' amazing act of camouflage up close.

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Over the summer, biologists from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco returned from an expedition to the Philippines with some very rare and diminutive guests, a mating pair of pygmy seahorses.

Pygmy seahorses live their entire adult lives attached to a type of coral called a Gorgonian sea fan. The seahorses use their long tails to grab on to the delicately branched sea fans. But what’s really amazing is their ability to match the coral’s bright color and knobby texture. They blend in so perfectly that they are barely visible, even to a trained eye.

Pygmy seahorses are nearly impossible to raise in captivity. Until recently, there was no record of the seahorses ever living long enough to breed in an aquarium. As a result, very little is known about them, making them extremely attractive to researchers eager to learn about the mysterious species.

The Gorgonian sea fan is itself an animal, distantly related to jellyfish and anemones, and is very difficult to raise in tanks. But these seahorses cannot live without the them.

How do seahorses mate?

They do a courtship dance during which the female puts her eggs in the males brood pouch.

How do seahorses give birth?

Like other seahorses, it is the male pygmy that rears the offspring in his brood pouch, releasing groups of offspring every two weeks.

Check out an additional video from the Cal Academy: http://goo.gl/QhAf0T

Find out more about pygmy seahorses:

http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2014/10/21/pygmy-seahorses-masters-of-camouflage/

Created by KQED Public Media in San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios.

Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Deep Look is a project of KQED Science, which is supported by HopeLab, The David B. Gold Foundation; S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation; The Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation; The Vadasz Family Foundation; Smart Family Foundation and the members of KQED.

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Closed Caption:

This is a pygmy seahorse.
It's one of the smallest
species of seahorses
in the world, smaller
than a paper clip.
Camouflage is critical
to their survival.
It's how they hide
from predators.
The seahorses are
too small and too
fragile to make it on their own.
So unless they find a place
that they fit in perfectly,
they'll die.
So the pygmy seahorses spend
their entire adult lives
on a type of coral
called a sea fan.
Orange pygmy seahorses
live on orange sea fans.
Purple seahorses live
on purple sea fans.
But here's the mystery.
Do they search for a coral
that matches their color,
or do they change their
color to match the coral?
To explore that
question, you have
to watch the process
unfold, and no one
had ever done that
until this year.
Biologists went
to the Philippines
and collected a mating pair
of orange pygmy seahorses
from a sea fan 80
feet below the surface.
They rushed them back to the
California Academy of Sciences
in San Francisco, and there, for
the first time in an aquarium,
the pygmy seahorses survived.
The scientists watched the
male and female seahorses
performing their
daily courtship dance.
They saw baby seahorses pop out
of their father's brood pouch.
The babies all started
out a dull brown color.
So scientists
wanted to know, what
would happen if they
provided a purple sea fan
to the offspring
of orange seahorses?
And they got their answer.
The babies turned purple.
They grew calcified
bumps called tubercles
to match the coral's texture.
And there, they stayed.
We humans tend to think of
who we are as mostly fixed.
But in the ocean,
identity can be
a fluid and mysterious thing.