Deciduous sea dragon - an interesting inhabitant of the underwater world

I wonder if there is such an animal - deciduous sea dragon? Yes, such a creation is in fact. It is a fish, although of a very unusual kind.

Who is he?

It refers to a family of sea horses, which in themselves look exotic. They call it differently. Deciduous dragon, rag, sea pegasus - it's all about it. An interesting creature grows in length only 25-35 centimeters. Outwardly, it really looks like a dragon. Curved body, elongated "muzzle", thin processes along the whole body, on which flat, alga-like fins grow. And they need him only for disguise. Moves the dragon only with the help of two of them: the thoracic and dorsal. But thanks to the fins, he can reach speeds of up to 150 mph.

Defenseless creature

A deciduous marine dragon is able to change the color of its fins depending on the food. But also the color changes at the moment of danger and helps to disguise itself as the nearest plant. Deciduous sea dragon is an inoffensive fish. The dragon does not know how to defend himself, because he has no teeth. The only thing that a fish can do is take the color of the algae in which it hides. How does the leafy sea dragon feed? It turns out that he just sucks food. This is mostly small fish and shrimp. But sometimes, algae or even foreign objects fall into his mouth.

Good dad

The leafy sea dragon multiplies, laying eggs. It is interesting that the males take care of their offspring. As you know, seahorses fathers have eggs in special bags. But the deciduous sea dragon, whose photo is presented in this article, does not have such an adaptation. Therefore, he wears the eggs fixed in the lower part of the tail. Fry appear after 9 weeks. In total, the female can lay 250 eggs at a time. During the spawning of eggs, a pair of sea dragons do not forget about courtship. In the mornings they necessarily swim to each other and make a pair dance, during which the skin color changes. Eyewitnesses say that it looks very romantic. Newborn dragons have a transparent body with a bluish tint. You can also see on their skin black and white stripes. Adult are considered deciduous dragons who reached the age of two, although only 5% of the hatched fry live to it. Toddlers feed on plankton just two hours after they hit the water.

The Mystery of Nature

The deciduous sea dragon is an interesting creature. He lives only on the southern coast of Australia. His favorite habitat is the thickets of sea kale. This kind of cabbage can be found in the eastern Indian Ocean. But only in the Pacific Ocean there are marine deciduous dragons. It is very rare to see these marine inhabitants. Even the locals of Australia consider them to be almost mythical creatures. Often after the ascent, scuba divers assure that there is no sea dragon, because they could not see it. But this, of course, is not so. Just deciduous sea dragon is so well camouflaged that not everyone can notice it. To see it under water, it is necessary to look at the seaweed for a long time, while one of the dragons does not cease to feel danger and will not start to move. Then a miracle happens: the plant will turn into a fish in the eyes of amazed spectators.

Rare Creation

The sea deciduous dragon has a brother - a sea weed dragon. It is so called, because it looks like bottom garbage. Although the structure of the body and the presence of the shoots is very similar to the deciduous dragon. Only the garbage leaf fins are much smaller. Deciduous sea dragons very often die. The blame for this is both people and nature itself, which created them very delicate and vulnerable. Dragons do not have enough strength in their tails to cling to them for underwater plants. Therefore, during a storm, they are carried away and thrown ashore. In addition, people often catch sea dragons to have them in their collections or sell to supporters of alternative medicine. The fry of the sea dragons are not yet capable of disguising themselves as well as adults, and they can not really swim, so they often die from the attack of predators.

These fish are very beautiful and interesting creatures. Many would like to have them in their aquariums, if this were possible. From our article you learned who the deciduous sea dragon is. A report on this topic will be complemented by the performance of any naturalist.