Seahorse Live Prey Capture – Incredible!

Seahorses are notoriously slow, but scientists have learned that their unique shape allows them to overcome this limitation. Despite their cute and unpretentious, seahorses are actually serious killers. The morphology of their head hydrodynamically aids in capture of evasive prey.

The researchers who conducted the study say they are fish in the slowest known to science swim, but they can catch prey that swim at an incredible speed. Under ideal conditions, seahorses catch their prey in 90% of cases, a success rate that would be surprising for any other predator.

Seahorse’s prey, namely copepods can detect waves / currents of approaching predators and flee at speeds of more than 500 times their body length per second. Reported to man, it is as if you were swimming 3218 km/h – 2000 mph

Making of the Movie

To get to this conclusion, the University of Texas research team used a special technique to capture the 3D motion of the water around the seahorses. The technique, called holography and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), using a microscope equipped with a laser and a high speed digital camera.

This was published on “Nature Communication” website

Morphology of seahorse head hydrodynamically aids in capture of evasive prey