So... I'm Not the Only One....

I think I pass a little bit better than you,
Mr. Seahorse...

I have a new favorite animal.... It is the seahorse...  and here is why:

From:  Male Seahorses Are Nature's Mr. Mom, Researchers Say (although I find this title totally offensive, the article is still fascinating, if you leave out the heteronormativity...)

"When seahorses mate, the female inserts her ovipositor into the male's brood pouch (an external structure that grows on the body of the male) and deposits her unfertilized eggs into the pouch. The male then releases sperm into the pouch to fertilize the eggs. "It wouldn't be that interesting if the brood pouch were just a flap of skin where the females put regular fish eggs and they developed in the bag instead of on the sea floor," Jones said. "But the male pregnancy in some species of seahorses and pipefish is physiologically much more complex than that."

After the female deposits her unfertilized eggs into the male, the outer shell of the eggs breaks down, and tissue from the male grows up around the eggs in the pouch. After fertilizing the eggs, the male closely controls the prenatal environment of the embryos in his pouch. The male keeps blood flowing around the embryos, controls the salt concentrations in the pouch, and provides oxygen and nutrition to the developing offspring through a placenta-like structure until he gives birth."

So... I am going to start thinking of myself as a sea horse...  perhaps this will help with visualization during birth.  I was just REALLY excited to find this little fact out and needed people to know about this immediately.