sea dragons – The Artful Amoeba http://theartfulamoeba.com A blog about the weird wonderfulness of life on Earth Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:22:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.31 The Sublime Dance of the Weedy Sea Dragon http://theartfulamoeba.com/2009/12/26/the-sublime-dance-of-the-weedy-sea-dragon/ http://theartfulamoeba.com/2009/12/26/the-sublime-dance-of-the-weedy-sea-dragon/#comments Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:19:11 +0000 http://frazer.northerncoloradogrotto.com/?p=2206 Snowed in and still wired  . . . so I’d like to close the year with something beautiful for you to contemplate. BBC keeps releasing short clips of “Life” on YouTube, and here is another (Dang you BBC! When will you release this in full in the states? When? When?!). Hit the resize button second-to-right in the lower right-hand corner to super-awesome-ify it, and the HD button too if you have the bandwidth.

Sigh. I’ll never forget the first time I saw leafy sea dragons (a relative of these weedy sea dragons) at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. My mom practically had to drag me out of the room.

Sea dragons are not true seahorses, belonging instead to the seahorse sister taxon (most closely related group), the pipefish. The proper name of the group is Syngnathinae, which means fused-jaw (syn-gnath), and if you look at their beaks, you can see that their jaws are indeed sealed shut. Here’s a short BBC article discussing the Life clip you just watched.

And with that, we conclude our programming for 2009. I look forward to sharing the tiny, slimy, tentacled and beautiful with you in the next decade too. Cheers, all, and stay safe this holiday season. : ) Jen

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