Its Hips Don't Lie: How the Seahorse Got Its Curves
The ocean is sometimes less foreign than we imagine.
After all, it is full of animals that seem all to familiar to land-dwelling beings. Names of creatures such as the lionfish, cowfish, and of course, the seahorse are often result of their coincidental appearance with a land animal of similar name; but has this coincidence always existed? Recent research, performed by experts at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, suggests that this is not the case.
The researchers looked to the hunting patterns of the aptly named seahorse as evidence of a longstanding evolutionary path that has transformed a once simple organism into the equine marvel “critter-hunters” see it as today. Scientists discovered that the curved neck and elongated snout of the seahorse allows a longer range of attack for the surprise predator in comparison to its distant relative, the pipefish.
Computer simulations confirmed the divergence in predation styles between the two relatives, revealing the critical pivot point in the seahorse's attack, otherwise absent in the pipefish, which proves so advantages for these “sit and wait” predators.
"Once this shift in foraging behavior is made, natural selection will favor animals that can increase the strike distance,” explains researcher Sam Van Wassenbergh, “which according to our study puts a selective pressure to increase the angle between head and trunk and to become what we now know as sea horses."
So next time you spot a toadfish, frogfish, or lionfish, think not only how it got its name, but how billions of years worth of evolution transformed it into something terrestrially familiar.
