Leafy seadragon
Phycodurus eques
— Where the name comes from
Phycodurus contains phŷkos, the seaweed, and alludes to the leaf-shaped appendages sprouting all over its body; eques means “knight”, for the horse-like head it shares with the seahorses. The common name translates the English leafy sea dragon, and it is the right one: it looks like a torn frond of weed on the move.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Pipefishes and seahorses
- Habitat
- Weed and kelp beds between 5 and 30 metres
- Range
- The southern coasts of Australia
- Size
- 30–35 cm, 50–120 g
- Diet
- Mysids and small crustaceans sucked up with the snout
- Lifespan
- 9 years
— Characteristics
- 01
The leafy appendages are not used for swimming: they are pure disguise.
- 02
It moves with two nearly invisible transparent fins, and moves very slowly.
- 03
It has neither teeth nor stomach: it sucks prey in and digests at once.
— What sets it apart
The male carries the eggs. The female transfers about two hundred and fifty of them onto the underside of his tail, where they lodge in a patch of soft skin that swells and nourishes them for eight weeks, until the young detach already independent. It is a male pregnancy, as in the seahorses this species is related to, and nobody has yet fully explained why in this family the sex that carries the young is the wrong one compared with every other vertebrate.
