Seahorse Tour at the Cal Academy of Sciences

I was just sitting there, playing Flood-It. Just then, Talya and Devin came in. The tour started. We walked to a room where we answered very basic questions and asked questions that we had. Seahorses belong to the family Syngnathidae. Other members of this family are the sea dragon, the pipefish, and the pipehorse. There are only 2 species of sea dragons (the leafy sea dragon and the weedy sea dragon) and there are 45 species of seahorses.All seahorses belong to the genus Hippocampus. In Greek, hippo means horse and kampos means sea monster. Here are 5 types of seahorses:
Hippocampus barbouri, Barbour's seahorse
Hippocampus hippocampus, Short-snouted seahorse
Hippocampus kelloggi, Kellogg's seahorse
Hippocampus minotaur, Bullneck seahorse
Hippocampus zebra, Zebra seahorse
Seahorses are very slow swimmers. It could take a seahorse one hour to swim across a swimming pool.


Then we went down to the specimen lab, which had 250,000 (1/4 million) specimens. Dr. Dave Catania showed us some specimens. We first saw an angler fish. The first picture is a picture of the angler fish. Then we saw a stonefish, which is extremely poisonous. According to Wikipedia, the poison can be removed when you apply water that iS at 113 degrees F. Then we saw a specimen of a seahorse. We saw several specimens of sea dragons. Then we went to the molecular lab.


First, the DNA is separated with some chemicals. Then, the DNA goes through a liquid gel. It is illiuminated by UV light and processed through a computer to see the DNA sequence. Then we went back to the small room where we started.


We asked Dr. Healy Hamilton questions about seahorses, pipefish and seadragons. Dr. Hamilton showed us a pipefish fossil from Italy. I asked her why the pipefish didn't have fins. She said that the pipefish was so ancient that it didn't have fins. She asked us what our favorite animals were and I said that I had 8 favorite animals. She told me to name three of them. "Elephants, zebras and giraffes," I said. She said that I will have to work in Africa.


Next, we went to the Steinhart Aquarium. We saw Hippocampus redii eat some shrimp. Seahorses suck their food through their long snout in 7 milliseconds. This was the first time I ever saw a seahorse eat. I watched this in videos before but never live. We also saw some seadragons though not for the first time. The two species of seadragons, the weedy seadragon and the leafy seadragon were in the aquarium. I quickly took seven photos of the leafy and weedy seadragons.
And now, the tour was over. While hurrying up the stairs, I dropped the iPhone. Luckily it didn't fall down the stairs. I picked it up and saw a huge American alligator. We came out and went back home.

Sources/References                                                                        
Specimen Lab:
Anglerfish-Wikipedia
Stonefishes-Wikipedia
Other:
Seahorses and Seadragons by Mary Jo Rhodes

"We first saw an angler fish."

 "We answered some basic questions."

"I quickly took 7 photos of the seadragons."