Hippocampus comes

Hippocampus comes (commonly known as Tiger Tail Seahorse)

Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Gasterosteiformes
Family:	Syngnathidae
Genus:	Hippocampus
Species:	H. comes
Binomial name
Hippocampus comes Cantor, 1850

The tiger tail seahorse (Hippocampus comes) is a species of fish in the Syngnathidae family. It is found in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Its natural habitats are subtidal aquatic beds and coral reefs. It is threatened by habitat loss.

General Information:
The tiger tail sea horse lives in Western Central Pacific: Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It lives from 2-3 years. It is harmless. Its climate in water is tropical; 15°N - 1°N and Its maximum size is 18.7 cm. Its snout is 2.2 in head length; it is used to suck up food. They eat small fish, coral, small shrimp, and plankton. The most common pattern is alternating yellow and black. The tail has stripes from the belly to the tip of the tail. These sea horses are normally found in pairs on coral reefs, sponge gardens, kelp, or floating Sargassum. The male carries the eggs in a brood pouch on their chest which holds from 1 - 2,000 eggs and the pregnancy takes from 1 to 4 weeks. Its also used for traditional Chinese medicine. Seahorse populations are thought to have been endangered in recent years by over fishing and habitat destruction. The seahorse is used in traditional Chinese medicine, and as many as 20 million seahorses may be caught each year and sold for this purpose. Import and export of seahorses has been controlled under CITES since May 15, 2004. They don't have scales as fish do, they have more like hard thin skin stretched out around bony rings on their bodies. They swim upright, not horizontally.

What do they eat?
It may be hard to imagine of such seemingly harmless creatures, but seahorses are voracious predators. They sit-and-wait in ambush to capture tiny animals that drift or wander by. These shrimps, crabs and tiny crustaceans are sucked up and swallowed whole. The jaws are tube-like ending in a tiny toothless mouth. 'Syngnathus' means 'fused jaws' in Greek.
A seahorse needs to eat a lot continuously because its digestive system is simple and it does not have a stomach. Even a baby seahorse can eat thousands of tiny shrimp in a day! The seahorse has highly mobile eyes that can move independently of one another to look out for predators and prey without moving its body. Like other predators, seahorses are often territorial, and seahorses in a seagrass meadow are often well spaced apart.

Pregnant fathers:
Seahorses reproduce in a peculiar way. It is male that carries the eggs in his body and thus becomes 'pregnant'. The female lays her eggs in his pouch using a tube that looks very much like a penis. Inside his pouch, the eggs are fertilized and become embedded into the body walls. The blood vessels in the pouch provide the eggs with oxygen and nutrients. The production of these nutrients is stimulated by prolactin, one of the hormones that affect pregnancy in mammals.
Emerging from the eggs, the babies hatch as miniature seahorses and may remain in the pouch for a while before the father goes into 'labour' and ejects them out of the pouch.
Once they leave his pouch, he does not look after them. In fact, his mate is often ready with another batch of eggs. So he is often constantly 'pregnant'! Some seahorses perform elaborate courtship dances, sometimes changing colours as they move and holding tails as they swim together. In the wild, some form mated pairs.


Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_tail_seahorse
http://www.wildsingapore.com/wildfacts/vertebrates/fish/syngnathidae/hippocampus.htm