How Plate Tectonics Gave Us Seahorses
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
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How did seahorses - one of the ocean’s worst swimmers - spread around the globe? And where did they come from in the first place?
Thanks to Franz Anthony (franzanth.com) for the incredible syngnathid reconstructions used in this episode!
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Seahorses hold special status in our house. Our son became fascinated by seahorses when he was a toddler. He had a stuffed seahorse that he slept with, and he started wanting stories, books, and videos about seahorses. He eventually learned everything there was to know about seahorses, and we got to hear all about it! We did not ever hear about plate tectonics and seahorses, though. I’ll have to send him this video! (He’s all grown up now.)
Wholesome!
Very wholesome!
Turns out your son just may be autistic.
@@kiuk_kiks I’m autistic. He’s not.
I love knowing I wasn't the only seahorse enthusiast as a kid! Lol I wanted a pet seahorse so badly! 😂
Seahorses are so fascinating in their appearance. They look like some ancient dragon, inked onto a scroll, come to life.
I think they look like if a horse was in or surrounded by sea
Ever see a leafy sea dragon!?
@TheEngineGal, I can see that. Pretty cool observation.
And then you realize how lame they are the more you know of them
@Traj Have you seen their skeleton? It looks more or less exactly like the seahorse. They are pretty much at the between point of an endoskeleton and exoskeleton.
Their pectoral fins (the same structure where our arms came from) are found on their "head", they are a completely warped looking fish when you put that part in mind. This is made more so by the fact that not only are they upright, their head points forwards with a distinct neck. Instead of a finned tail, its prehensile, like a chameleon.
Seahorses are the complete opposite of lame, they are bonkers.
Sea horses are magical. I'm pretty sure everyone remembers when they first learned about them as kids. Their name is perfect for capturing childhood wonder.
Sea horses and starfish was the reason that I'm fascinated about the ocean as a kid.
@@dyllanfreiheit6330 I like starfish and love seahorses. I'm just disappointed when I learnt that starfish had no brains.
So, seahorses galloped across the ocean grasslands to migrate, just as land horses used terrestrial ones to do the same.
Could you imagine if we would of had access to big enough sea horse to ride and we especially Polynesians and S.E Asians used them for transport across the seas. Hahah funner then riding a dolphin I say.
@@memoofjacoboarbenzjuanarev9724 Far Out Man!
I propose and hypothesize that the ancient seahorses used to pull the ancient pioneer's big beautiful rocks accross the sandy wastes
Request: Psathyrella aquatica, the only known underwater mushroom
Request*
Interesting never hear of that fungi
this!!
Psathyrella aquatica* and yes its so cool
Aye, and while we’re at it, wiki
Desert fungi and find out about the mycelium networks under Arizona and New Mexico (they are researching this a bit at UTEP)
"If not for plate tectonics, seahorses would never have been able to take over the world" - possibly now topping my list of "10 Reasons for the Seahorse's World Domination "
(actually a fascinating, VERY well-presented argument. Thanks)
don't be shy give us the other 9 reasons for the Seahorse's World Domination 👀
@@ShojJiaNyurrr (well, #2 -7 are all just different ways of saying "Super-bad Super Dad"...)
The fact that seahorses used the Mediterranean as a shortcut to spread around the world when that sea was still turning into the shape of a seahorse is just…wholesome to me.
(To anyone who might have never noticed this, look at the Mediterranean at 7:21. Turns out it even looked more like a sea horse than it does today at some point.)
Yep👍
I hadn't noticed but if you want to get technical it by definition didn't become the Mediterranean until it got sealed off due to the collision between India and Eurasia but that is name semantics
I also noticed that it looked like a seahorse when I was still a small child, and it always seemed weird to me that teachers never acknowledged this.
Wow, never noticed this! Awesome
... didn't see it - but now 🙂
🙏🏼
When I was a kid my Dad used to have salt water fish tanks. We kept seahorses at one point. They were amazing!
Oh wow! That's so cool! I've heard they're really hard to keep alive. (But then...the only fish I've ever had long-term success with keeping alive were bettas, so....)
Same with my family! They're such beautiful creatures, and they're so romantic when they court each other.
The main issue is they are really picky eaters, so you generally have to supply them with ample amounts of live copepods. If I remember right from when I was doing all my saltwater research.
@@zacrintoul they do eat those but they're definitely not limited to that. My seahorses ate frozen mysis shrimp for the most part, occasionally supplementing with live ghost shrimp. Also we took over a year and a half to create enough biodiversity in the tank before introducing seahorses to have enough phytoplankton and zooplankton already existing in the tank. But they primarily fed on the frozen shrimp and were fine
I would love to have a pet seahorse, but I don’t have the knowledge or the supplies to care for them properly.
"So if it hadn't been for plate tectonics, seahorse wouldn't have been able to take over the world."
*bows before seahorse overlords*
I was not expecting Slovenia to ever feature in one of your videos. Greetings from Ljubljana 😊
PS: Great video, as always
Love Ljubljana, absolutely beautiful city! Greetings from Sweden
As always!
Me neither, I was so pleasantly surprised🥰
Looks like eons have an unofficial fan group in slovenija. 💪
Greetings from vienna neighbours 🙌
Speaking of puzzles. Maybe you guys can make a 3d bone or fossile puzzle that mimics a paleontologist putting together a skeleton.
While I admire the thought, I think that is likely an engineering nightmare. Bones are generally held together by a lot of connective tissue; they do fit together, but without all that overlaying them, nothing is going to hold them in place
@@slwrabbits Yeah, museums use a lot of wire to keep the bones together
@@slwrabbits - Don't jump right to negativism. I have an Eifel Tower puzzle that forms a large 3-D structure ~2.5 feet tall. Designers could EASILY do the same thing with one of the iconic dino skeletons, like T-Rex! This is a GREAT suggestion.
There were these kinds of puzzles in the 90s. They were 3d puzzles of dinosaur
@@MossyMozart thats a building that already has supports, we are, again, talking about fossils which have zero supports or connective tissue between the bones. Doable yes(probably not as a puzzle but at least as a sculpture with instructions), but not nearly the same thing as what youre talking about, and not nearly as easy as youre saying it is
Plate Tectonics: *Slowly moving and smashing into each other for millions of years*
One prehistoric pipefish boi: P e r f e c t
“Cool fish dads” and then finger guns hahahahahaha! I loved that
I can remember going to a Sea-Life Centre and they had a small section devoted to seahorses and they were feeding some tiny seahorses by using what looked like a plastic seed feeder for birds
All three of you presenters have such calm and soothing voices. And you have this child-like excitement when you talk about evolution. I love listening to you before bed or while having breakfast. It always calms me down! Thanks for uploading!
Several years back I was watching something on Nature or Nova that kept posing questions about how did [thing that looks baffling on the surface] happen? The answer was always plate tectonics, which I yelled at the TV every time. It was almost as fun as when Big Bird couldn’t find his dinosaur costume and I got to yell “It’s OK, you ARE a dinosaur!” before whichever Sesame Street resident told him that. I am, at 53, perhaps not the target audience for every program.
I very much appreciate the colors in the hypothetical seahorses/proto seahorses. I feel like sometimes color used for hypothetical envisioning of creatures is so monotone
You would not believe how many people I've talked to in my life, that thought seahorses were mythical creatures, on par with Unicorns, Pixies, and Elves. But "No", I tell them, "they actually do exist." Then sometimes, I get the hairy eyeball, like they're not believing what I'm telling them.
More than once, I've had to break out my cell phone, and hit up Google, so I can prove that I am not crazy.🙄
What state do you live in?
@@sylvia106 Florida, But I travel a lot. So I'm usually somewhere else. But I've always liked being by the ocean. I'm there and in it, as often as I can be.
This is like me finding people who think reindeer are not real...
Extremely hard to believe. Maybe you met 1 child in some remote place who had never had any education at all that would make your comment semi-plausible...
I think some of you, have a little bit too much faith in humanity. Not to mention the intelligence level of the average human.
How does the old saying go? Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half the people, are even more stupid than that.
When I was younger, I wanted a seahorse more than anything, because I thought they were... big enough to ride! Thanks a lot Aquaman cartoon lol! When I found out the truth, saying I was disappointed is putting it mildly, but that disappeared completely when I got to see real ones at the Aquarium, I've been fascinated with them ever since 💜 Thank you for this presentation!
I once saw an exhibit at the Aquarium of the Pacific at Long Beach, California. I was there shortly after they became the first institution of get leafy seadragons to hatch, so it was being celebrated throughout the entire facility. They were so delicate, beautiful, and smaller than I expected that it was mind-blowing to think of them living in the wild, like delicate hummingbirds are on land.
Love your videos. I've been fossil hunting a few times. Found a trilobite in Ohio when in grade school, over 50 years ago. Love how it gives a true perspective of time.
I simply love this channel and don't wanna imagine my life without it. It's so cool to learn about the strange creatures that used to love before us.
😉
" ❤️ "
could you do an episode on the evolution of prehistoric art ?
Stefan Milo has some great stuff on that! I'd say it's more paleo anthropolog, anthropology, or archaeology than paleontology tho 🤷🏻♂️ but let's see! 😄 Certainly an interesting topic
“One of the ocean’s worst swimmers…” shows a seahorse straightening as if to say “You said what?”
The ancient seahorses rode horseback on rafts and tectonics.
This is such a quintessential PBS Eons title. I love it
Methinks Blake is a cool fish dad. :D
It's so cool how much we know. Seahorses are such random animals, but humans decided that it was worth it to fund research to figure out where they originated. I kind of love that for us
that is like the catchiest title ever
Ever since looking at the tectonics of SE asia in college I've wondered wtf is going on. It's a veritable clusterfuck of fault lines.
@Khilorn - I imagine that a lot of children watch these videos. Would you consider watching your language?
This guy is great!
Requesting a Video on Why the Cyprinid and Other Cyprinoforms are a Dominant Species in Eurasia, while, Chiclids are a Dominant Fish Species in Africa and South America
And why none of them were able to Take over North America, until pretty recently, that's too due to Introduction by Humans and Only in Some limited areas
And Why Siluriforms (Catfish) are the Most Dominant Fresh water Predatory Fish lineage in the World?
Hey! What’s the word on the podcast? I was really into it! I’d love more episodes on prehistoric humans! I really love to imagine what the world was like when there as many humans as there were cats.
As much as I'd love a calendar, $85 CAD for two calendars and shipping is ridiculous. Dang.
It would be neat to see future descendants of seahorses (or their relatives) that are better at... Everything.
Edit: like sea dragons that actually live up to the title of dragon.
These gorgeous little dragons are the best dads of animal kingdom 🧡
Whichever ones DON'T eat their young would definitely rate higher according to our sapien brains.
idk emperor penguins i think top them in not eating for months while living in the eternal night of winter all to protect an egg that may not hatch
@@VINCE-pp3es 👍
Look at this handsome distinguished gentleman from PBS Eons dropping scientific gems on us. I'm here for it. Teach me about sea horses and the magical world that is beneath the sea.
7:02 how did they survive in the open Atlantic? How did they cross the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?
6:15 : By rafting. They grabbed onto debris that was washed around by storms, just riding it to wherever it went. They would have survived much more often when the Atlantic was narrow than they'd be able to today.
What's the mid-Atlantic ridge have to do with it? It is WAY below the surface in most places. Just a few sticky outy islands are above sea level.
Love your videos!! It's helped me create my speculative future earth!
That sounds awesome!
Can't wait to read/ see/ hear it!
Sounds like a very interesting project. Things like speculative zoology and the like are so fascinating to me.
I couldn't resist the title, and I'm glad of it! Very interesting, thank you.
Seahorses always remind me of a comic from PoorlyDrawnLines where one seahorse says to the other: "I saw a land horse swimming once, and I was like 'Who the f**k do you think you are?'"
As an indonesian who study biology, i was facinated by this fact/discovery. i've never expect early ancestor of seahorses originated here.
I've kept dwarf seahorses; they're incredible to watch and take up shocking little space. Even wild caught specimines breed readily in home aquariums.
They're difficult to care for, though. They don't really have stomachs so they require live food several times per day. That usually means having a rotating set of brine shrimp hatcheries, and starting fresh ones a couple times per week, and feeding once or twice per day. That's very high maintenance for a fish. Dwarf seahorses are also the slowest fish in the world, so you can imagine how attempting to chase a couple hundred tiny baby brine shrimp in a 30 gallon tank would lead to starvation. That's why they should be kept in 5 or 10 gallon tanks, unless you plan on finding each seahorse and target feeding them all with a pipette two to three times per day.
For once, I'm early to an Eons video. Can't wait to listen to this new gem-to-be!
From what I've read the concepts for Sea Horse evolution is the same for Corals and reef specialists. They all followed the equator through gaps between continents.
Seahorses always look so serene and wise.
Seahorses look so elegant and graceful
Would be cool to have a private tank full of them
Love seahorses!
That was definitely one of the funnier Eonite jokes, lol!
I love Eons but I usually groan at the end jokes, this one was actually decent - I was baffled.
Living most my life landlocked I’ve never given much thought to sea grass. I’d be interested in learning about them and terrestrial grasses
My son love seahorses, and he'll be very happy to know that he and his fav animal have similar geographical origin, Indonesia!
Hope one day you'll make a video on the end Permian extinction event's two phases - I'd love to hear you guys spelling it out!
Please, please, please release more episodes of the podcast. I would listen to these on my daily walks and I’m missing them.
The fact that this channel continues to have the most absurd video titles and then directly back them up with scientific evidence is why they're so amazing.
It always gives you a sense of wonder at the awesome craziness of our planet.
This is the best title I have seen this year.
VERY special kind of animals!!! .-)
Great video on one of my most favourite animals. I wish I could have some in my home but I know that they are so sensitive to temperature changes that even aquariums have problems keeping them. Thank you!
I love how "Click-Bait-ey" you titles are. I saw this and my brain played Tim Allen's 'confused/questioning' grunt sound.
Another win for plate techtonics. I love it. I've been into plate techtonics since I was a teenager.
I believe it was Michael Flanders who compared it to "...a very perfect and gentle-knight of the chessboard..."
That "moon rock" pun was lifted right from the second episode of Futurama.
Address all complaints to the Monsanto corporation.
Learning about pleisiosaurs and pliosaurs (sp?), it's amazing that all these years later... A funky looking fish might be using similar adaptation to quickly snap its prey
I love seahorses & especially sea dragons, trailing their finery like boho princesses (also princes!) in chiffon scarves. I visited the Long Beach Aqaurium when they were the first place to successfully breed them in captivity (I think I have that right, I know it was some "first" to do with breeding. If I ever win the lottery big-time, I'll have a giant saltwater aquarium (& a full-time caretaker!) with those cuties inside!
Didn't expect to be hit in the face with my tiny home country in a video about seahorses, this caught me off guard in the most pleasant way possible! Wth😃
Super interesting, gotta love seahorses! Surely though it’s a much easier route to reach the pacific coast of the Americas going through the strong warm currents east of Indonesia rather than around Africa, the Med and across the entire Atlantic
There is little issue of starving to death along the way thanks to travel times, I suppose...
@@KuK137 Yeah the lack of nutrients out in the vast open Pacific ocean far from land would almost certainly kill the algae(likely kelp) raft and anything which depended on it. Kelp would have to be the kind of long distance raft since seagrasses are true flowering plants(angiosperms) they are dependent on suitable hospitable soil for habitat for their seeds.
Also while its a bit of a digression at least some sea grasses apparently rely on crustacean based pollination which is interesting given they are the only true plants we know of which have made the full transition back into the ocean. Mangroves are close but they still with the exception of their roots photosynthesize above the water and also have to secrete salts out of their bodies.
It would be interesting to learn about how sea grasses we able to make this ecological jump that other plants haven't done. I know there are many challenges for plants given that their ancestors were freshwater algae that colonized land by forming symbiotic associations with fungi but I'm curious what the main selection factors are that limit them?
There's a seahorse on the tiwanaku museum, it says it was a lake seahorse, if you could find out a little more about this creature 🙏🙏🙏
Just (re)learned about plate tectonics today. This is a great crossover and example of how geology affects life!
i expect that because a seahorse/dragon does very little swimming its caloric requirements are very low - maybe lower than other sygnathids and most other fish - perhaps that gave it an evolutionary advantage at some point in its history
Got a video of my first seahorse on a dive in kota Kinabalu last year. VERY exciting!
Great video! Thanks for creating a movie on fossil seahorses!
I brought a seahorse home once when i was 7 yrs old. My first ever pet.
"How did Syngnathids in general get their prehensile tail?" is my main question. I just want to why they even evolved that trait in the first place.
Edit: nvm, I know. Please show this to Avnj.
5:03
You probably missed that point on the video.
This is super wholesome content 💯
Please never stop.
That sea horse looks like a modern pipe fish
well there's a reason for that! seahorses are a type of pipefish (as are seadragons). They have a different body shape to "typical" pipefishes due to their specializations for different niches than other pipefishes. So it makes sense that early seahorses would have looked similar to pipefishes
I love Eons! and scoped PBS donate /Eons -WEDU of Tampa Bay Area. So Blake this as all episodes was a needed way lovely mood from your cool presentation of natural history.
Plus I even recalled a hard laugh picturing back in teens, early eighties a buddy of mine living on Boca Ciega Bay spontaneously stiffly jumped off dock- dorky belly flopping when he spotted a one of our small seahorses rafting by like colloidal plankton. Cramps from laughing for five others ..., The guys "prolly best I didn't catch it".
A rare sight but we did see them in deep coastal mangrove most. We also might have a pipefish that chills in our estaurine submergent grasses-"Tortuga/""matatee grass or "eelgrass". I rhoughtst sight of two my toddler son netted blew our doors! The "snout" for achoring, plate-like skin and reduced itty bitty fins in slow bright sandy shallow and grassy water. ....we banned fertilizer of N P during rainy season and our water quality decent except for Rx metabolites and necrosing Vibrio🧐. Watersheds are EVERYTHING, even your weather.
🍻✌️And thank you
barrier isles of peninsular Pinellas County on the West Central/Gulf side) of Florida utting the multiple disciplines' latest intel w/ varied factors and any various interpretations all together to best understand the oh SO RELATIVE past.
So I guess you could say that the evolution of seahorses was remarkably similar to the evolution of horses -- at roughly the same time that grasses were spreading on land, creating habitats for horses, seagrasses were spreading underwater, creating habitats for seahorses.
I do love sea horses - they are so elegant. also love sea dragons. both so gorgeous.
I LOVED THOSE JOKES!! 🤣🤣 Totally the best cool-fish-dad jokes!!!
My brother in law’s fav animal is a sea horse and part of his nickname we have for him is “seahorsius”.
I Hope that one day you'll make a video on the end Permian extinction event's two phases!!!
yeah! What I asked for too!! 😄
The picture of Aquaman riding seahorse kept coming to my mind whenever a seahorse appeared on the screen. Lol 😆
of all the animals that don't look real seahorses take the cake. forget the platypus, these guys are evolutions wackiest idea
No, that would be sponges. Yes, those are animals. Some antarctic ones even move across the sea floor.
Lmao have you seen jellyfish?
Why? There were MANY more Monotremes at one time. It is just a few of them that managed to survive to present day.
@@Bogwedgle have you seen sea anemones? They can move btw
I love seahorses so much, they look so cool in art and pictures and elegant in their design, yet they swim like stupid little fish and they are just so precious and so dumb 🥺❤️
yes I always see them here in the Philippines
That was informative 👌🏻
2:50 Fry Daddies
Thumbs Up for the cool fish dads 👍
I wonder if the shallow seas in Southeast Asia due to plate tectonic can also explain why the area is densely populated. Shallow seas means more seafood.
How do the eggs(?) get into the brood pouch?
Basically after courtship, the female will insert her eggs into the pouch of the male, after which the male will fertilize the eggs and incubate them until they hatch.
I was listening for mention of fresh water seahorses of South America, west coast mountains
I love learning new things about nature. I’m truly hooked on this channel’s videos!
Considering that we have people trying to change the name of starfish to "sea stars" because they're not actually fish, I wonder how long until someone tries to change the name of seahorses because (gasp!) they're not actually horses.
Its rather appropriate and somewhat funny that Grasslands are what gave rise to Horses and Sea "Grasslands" are what gave rise to Seahorses.
And they are in the world's highest lake
Thanks for sharing seahorse info as well as excellent giggles!
I found your choice of of humoristic bit - well done. Keep up the great work EON!
i do believe i remember them when i learned snorkelling in the caribbean side of cuba 1967.
by that time the soviet ships would pump out oily bilge waters in front of our best beaches... very thoughtful of them.
Seahorses are so beautiful and elegant. 😍
I have a dried seahorse I love to look at and hold, it is such a neat thing
perfect timing