Do seahorses have any special techniques?

Answer 1

Compared to most fish, seahorses are very slow swimmers, but they are excellent ambush hunters. They have prehensile tails so that they can anchor themselves to underwater plants and coral, a bit like a monkey would hang on to a tree branch to keep from falling. Once anchored, they stay very still so that they just look like part of the plant. Some species of seahorses can actually change color slightly, to camouflage themselves even better. Then all they need to do is stay very still and wait for tiny crustaceans, such as mysis shrimp to swim by so that they can suck them up with their long snouts and eat them (insects, such as the praying mantis use the same hunting technique when they camouflage themselves to look like twigs).

Part of the reason that they camouflage themselves is for protection from being attacked and eaten by larger, faster swimming fish. The keratin-based scales of the normal fish have evolved to be much thicker and harder in the seahorse for extra protection. It is more like armor than scales. The male seahorse has also developed a brood pouch to carry their partner's eggs so that they can protect them until they are born.