Why Do Male Seahorses Get Pregnant?
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22 Comments
Oleandervine is pretty much right.
The female seahorse transfers the eggs when they are still unfertilized and they become fertilized in the male's pouch. So in terms of who "gets pregnant?" the answer is the male.
As to why from an evolutionary sense this reproductive strategy occurs, and why it is so rare, I haven't seen a good explanation. Fish do weird things.
They don't. They just carry around the eggs. Sea creatures don't get preggers, they lay eggs and the eggs hatch from there. Male seahorses don't actually incubate the eggs, they just carry them for protection.
Dude ask Ghostcrawler, he is the one who knows sea shit here.
Does google not exist anymore?
I'm pretty sure male pipefish do something similar, though they just hold the eggs on their belly instead of having a pouch like sea horses do.
Some fish have weird reproductive strategies.
Sexual selection is a really weird area of study in animal behavior. I don't know how this evolved in seahorses. I'll look it up later and report back.
In mammals it does not happen this way because female eggs cost a lot more resources than male sperm. So it makes more sense for males to shoot their sperm everywhere possible, while females want to save their eggs for just the right mate. Female bodies are designed to carry children more effectively than males because of this. Maybe male seahorses have something special physiologically that allows them to carry the fertilized eggs more effectively than the females.
EDIT: here is a good article laying out some explanations: http://animals.mom.me/male-seahorses-give-birth-4198.html