Can YOU spot the seahorse?

29.01.2016 20:00

By showing off camouflage skills that would make a chameleon jealous, these tiny seahorses dedicate their lives to staying hidden.

The Pygmy Seahorse only grow to become one inch from nose to tail, so has been forced to come up with the ultimate way to blend in.

The baby seahorse is born completely grey, but once it has found its 'home' coral, it starts blending in - even growing colourful 'warts' to match it.

The incredible photographs, which show seahorses of a variety of colours playing their best hide-and-seek game, were taken by photographer Colin Marshall in Lembeh, in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The amazing creatures camouflage themselves with their sea fan environment, almost identically matching their colour, body width and even warts.

With no other defence mechanisms, camouflage is their only chance of survival, but it is a successful one.

Their tiny size makes spotting them even more difficult for predators. They reach no more than one inch from head to tail, making them small than a paperclip.

They are almost impossible to raise in captivity. Until recently, there was no record of the seahorses ever living long enough to breed in an aquarium.

Because of this, very little is known about them. They are a truly mysterious species.

The question of if they gain their colour or if they find the right fan was only uncovered in 2014 when biologists collected a mating pair of seahorses in the Philippines.

The experiment uncovered that babies are all born a dull grey colour. Then one it joins a coloured sea fan by grabbing it with their tail, it will match that colour and stay there for the rest of their lives.

The seahorses are too small and fragile to make it on their own, so unless they find a place to fit into perfectly, they will die.

Amazingly, the Alcyonacea sea fan in itself is an animal, distantly related to jellyfish and the seahorses truly can not live without them.

(www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3421101/Can-spot-seahorse-One-inch-long-pygmy-fish-hides-coral-growing-matching-camouflage.html?ito=social-facebook)