The beautiful dancing dragons
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Seadragons. Is there anything more mythical and magical than these guys?
Weedy seadragon. Photo by Dave Harasti
I’ve not been lucky enough to see a seadragon in the wild yet, although next time I’m in Australia I’m determined to find one.
But we can all enjoy the ornate beauty of the weedy seadragons – covered in their dapper suits of yellow spots – in the next episode of the BBC’s Life series. You can already peer at their moving mating ritual on a clip on the BBC website. This might be first time wild weedies have been caught at it on camera, so this is definitely worth 3 minutes of your next coffee break.
Quite gorgeous and a little bit hard to believe.
The violin and piano music is the perfect accompaniment, along with the warmth Sir David Attenborough’s narration. The whole thing plays out like some sort of beautiful undersea ballet.
There are two species of seadragon – the weedy and leafy varieties – both members of the same family as seahorses (the syngnathidae), both with the most extraordinary camouflage which they use to hide away among seaweed forests in the mostly chilly waters along Australia’s southern coast.
A pair of leafy seadragons. Photo by Dave Harasti.
From the BBC clip you can see the male weedy seadragon doing a great job of carrying the eggs around, safely stuck onto his belly, but he is not truly pregnant like the seahorse males. Instead of giving birth, the male seadragons simply stands by while the eggs hatch and the minute seadragons waft off to begin their own, independent lives.
Another clip on Arkive shows baby leafy seadragons making their way into the world.
These days, many seadragons are taken from the wild to put on display in aquariums all over the world. Attempts to persuade them to breed in captivity have so far been fairly unsuccessful. It seems these elegant dragons are choosy about how and where they mate.
But I can’t deny that watching these beautiful fish up close is a truly captivating experience.
Obviously, we mustn’t take too many of them from the wild. And whenever you see one in an aquarium, don’t forget their cousins roaming the southern shores of Australia, living in habitats threatened by pollution, climate change and all those other modern ocean problems.
If ever there were an animal that could persuade us to protect the seas, the seadragons must be a very strong candidate.
Because surely the world is a better place knowing there are real, live dragons lurking in the oceans.
Seadragons. Is there anything more mythical and magical than these guys?
Weedy seadragon. Photo by Dave Harasti
I’ve not been lucky enough to see a seadragon in the wild yet, although next time I’m in Australia I’m determined to find one.
But we can all enjoy the ornate beauty of the weedy seadragons – covered in their dapper suits of yellow spots – in the next episode of the BBC’s Life series. You can already peer at their moving mating ritual on a clip on the BBC website. This might be first time wild weedies have been caught at it on camera, so this is definitely worth 3 minutes of your next coffee break.
Quite gorgeous and a little bit hard to believe.
The violin and piano music is the perfect accompaniment, along with the warmth Sir David Attenborough’s narration. The whole thing plays out like some sort of beautiful undersea ballet.
There are two species of seadragon – the weedy and leafy varieties – both members of the same family as seahorses (the syngnathidae), both with the most extraordinary camouflage which they use to hide away among seaweed forests in the mostly chilly waters along Australia’s southern coast.
A pair of leafy seadragons. Photo by Dave Harasti.
From the BBC clip you can see the male weedy seadragon doing a great job of carrying the eggs around, safely stuck onto his belly, but he is not truly pregnant like the seahorse males. Instead of giving birth, the male seadragons simply stands by while the eggs hatch and the minute seadragons waft off to begin their own, independent lives.
Another clip on Arkive shows baby leafy seadragons making their way into the world.
These days, many seadragons are taken from the wild to put on display in aquariums all over the world. Attempts to persuade them to breed in captivity have so far been fairly unsuccessful. It seems these elegant dragons are choosy about how and where they mate.
But I can’t deny that watching these beautiful fish up close is a truly captivating experience.
Obviously, we mustn’t take too many of them from the wild. And whenever you see one in an aquarium, don’t forget their cousins roaming the southern shores of Australia, living in habitats threatened by pollution, climate change and all those other modern ocean problems.
If ever there were an animal that could persuade us to protect the seas, the seadragons must be a very strong candidate.
Because surely the world is a better place knowing there are real, live dragons lurking in the oceans.