Gallery: Baby Pygmy Seahorses Are Even Cuter Than You Think
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A 10-day old baby Bargibant's pygmy seahorse hunts a copepod.
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Steinhart's marine biologists put a pink variant of the sea horse's favored coral in their tank as an experiment.
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The male and female Bargibant's pygmy seahorse on its favored yellow coral.
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Bargibant's pygmy seahorse blend seamlessly with the the Muricella paraplectana. Can you see both adults?
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A 12-day old baby hunting brine shrimp.
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The male adult pygmy sea horse with a pencil eraser for scale.
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Every morning, the male and female do 30-60 minutes of synchronized twitching.
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When sea horses mate, the female inserts the eggs into the male's pouch using an appendage called an ovipositor.
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Biologist Matt Wandell and aquarium director Bart Shepherd have a bet to see whether the babies turn pink or orange. Wandell believes their coloration is genetic, and they'll be orange like their parents. Shepherd believes the environment plays a role, and there will be an even distribution of orange and pink sea horses.
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A one-day old baby pygmy sea horse.
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Another one-day old baby pygmy sea horse.
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A pair of one-day old baby pygmy sea horses near the surface of their tank. The 1/4 inch acrylic to their left shows how small they are.
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A 16-day old baby eating a copepod. Wandell says their jerky, picking hunting method is called "snicking."
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A one-day old baby on a ruler. Scale is millimeters.
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Several one-day old babies on a ruler.
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18-day old settled out of the water column and hitched for the first time to the coral. Prior to this, biologists didn't know how long it took pygmy sea horses to attach to coral.
