Dark tales around the fire (2): The amazing story of a father of 800 children

 Pregnant male seahorses grow a placenta to nurture their young | CBC Radio

Let’s call him Jack. Filled with paternal pride, Jack takes care of his 800 or more children growing up inside his body. Because Jack is pregnant, pregnancy is a male task in all the species of seahorse. You guessed it, Jack is a seahorse.

Green Renaissance - A herd of pregnant male seahorses. The female seahorse lays the eggs and transfers them into the male seahorses pouch where they are then incubated. Every male seahorse has

And Jack is a very social father to be, he likes so much bonding with all the (pregnant) boys.

 To achieve this desired fatherhood, Jack wooed a female, and they danced together in a beautiful courtship ritual that can last up to 8 hours. Finally, she deposited her eggs in the special pouch of thickened skin that Jack has in his belly. An extraordinary feat of coordination. Then eggs were fertilized inside Jack’s pouch, Jack being the male had sperma for this special task.

The gestation of Jack will last between 10 and 25 days, according to the species of seahorse to which Jack belongs. Eggs hatch inside his bag, but pregnancy does not end there. For many days, Jack will invest the greatest paternal dedication taking care of his growing family.[1]

It is not just about giving them shelter in a pouch that grows to give him the rounded appearance of a pregnant female mammal, with the weight gain that it entails. Jack works very hard for his young. He provides them with energy, supplying them with fat and calcium, essential for the growth of the skeleton and bone plates of his children. He takes care that the water inside is adequate to the age of the little fish, until it has an adequate degree of salinity to prepare them for the dangerous outside world. He gets rid of their waste. All these efforts are mediated by those hormones that we rarely associate with fatherhood, like estrogens. Actually, the process that occurs inside Jack's pouch is very similar to the gestation of mammals. Scientists have found that Jack has more than 3,000 genes involved in this gestation, in his fatherhood.[2][3]


When the time comes, with clearly visible contractions, the little ones go out into the vast world. They could be 2,000 in some species, but in this story ... Jack becomes the proud father of 800 children. It is at that time when he cuts ties with them, this act may be seen as tough but in the world of fish, the care that Jack has given them is extraordinary, the survival rate is much higher than the average among fish, about 5% .

There are 54 species of seahorse, and in all of them the males are responsible for becoming gestant. Seahorses are threatened by habitat loss, and fishing for traditional Asian medicine. If we lose them, we will lose all these heroic stories of so many Jacks, and a wonderful portion of our natural life.[4]

Apart from seahorses, all members of the Sygnathidae family have devised some specialization to take care of eggs, such as areas above their tails in needlefish and sea dragons.[5]

Footnotes

[1] Seahorse Fathers Take Reins in Childbirth

[2] Seahorse Brood Pouch Transcriptome Reveals Common Genes Associated with Vertebrate Pregnancy

[3] The secret sex life and pregnancy of a seahorse dad

[4] Hippocampus - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

[5] Seahorse Brood Pouch Transcriptome Reveals Common Genes Associated with Vertebrate Pregnancy

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