The moment a male hippocampus whitei, also known as a White's Seahorse, gave birth to around 100 offspring has been caught on camera at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.
The tailless tenrec is the mammal that gives birth to the greatest number of offspring per pregnancy. The average litter from this species is about 15 to 20 offspring after gestating for about two months. However, these mammals can give birth to much larger numbers of offspring, upwards of 32 at a time.
At the end of a gestation period usually lasting from two to four weeks, the pregnant male's abdominal area begins to undulate rhythmically, and strong muscular contractions eject from a few dozen to as many as 1,000 fully formed baby seahorses into the surrounding water.
A seahorse is a fish. Like most fish, it has a backbone, breathes through gills, and uses fins to move through water. Unlike most animals, it is the male seahorse that gives birth. A female seahorse places up to 2,000 eggs inside a pouch on the male's abdomen.
By human standards, seahorse courtship is viewed as very romantic. They are monogamous with one partner for their whole lives. Every day they meet in the male's territory and perform a sort of dance where they may circle each other or an object, change colour, and even hold tails.
A pregnant dad gestating up to 1,000 babies
This organ is called the brood pouch, in which the embryos develop. The female deposits eggs into the male's pouch after a mating dance and pregnancy lasts about 30 days.
Male Seahorses Get Pregnant and Give Birth
Although male seahorses carry the eggs, they don't make them. After the male and female seahorses spend time courting, the female deposits her eggs inside the male's pouch. The male then fertilizes the eggs inside the pouch.
Most wild seahorses (here the thorny seahorse Hippocampus histrix ) are monogamous and some species mate for life. Searching for mates can be difficult and risky since seahorses are poor swimmers, found in low densities and rely on camouflage to hide from predators.
Viviparous animals are born live. Animals such as cats and dogs are viviparous.
Among eusocial insects, queens of the African driver ant Dorylus wilverthi can lay broods with up to 3-4 million eggs every 25 days. This is probably the species with the highest lifetime fecundity among eusocial insects.
Most animals that procreate through parthenogenesis are small invertebrates such as bees, wasps, ants, and aphids, which can alternate between sexual and asexual reproduction.
Elephants have the longest pregnancy period of any living mammal. If you – or someone you know – has experienced a pregnancy that seemed to go on forever, spare a thought for the elephant.
A blue whale's mammary glands are the largest in the world. The breast of a blue whale is just 5 feet long and as big as a tiny human, but it weighs 250 pounds, the same as a baby elephant. The inverted breasts on all blue whales only come out when the newborn whale stimulates them. Milk is thrown at them.
Each litter can contain between one and 12 babies, with the average being five. And female rabbits can get pregnant again almost immediately after giving birth. When you consider that the babies of each litter can begin reproducing so soon after they are born, the math can quickly become overwhelming.
Many species of fish, like the kobudai, are known as “sequential hermaphrodites”: they can switch sex permanently at a specific point in their lives. The majority of “sequential hermaphrodites” are known as “protogynous” (Greek for “female first”): they switch from female to male.
Yes, a male giving birth—painful contractions and all. Turns out, when it comes to seahorses, males are actually the ones that become pregnant and carry the babies.
A person who was born male and is living as a man cannot get pregnant. However, some transgender men and nonbinary people can. In most cases, including cis-men who have sex with men, male pregnancy is not possible.
How long do they live? The natural lifespans of seahorses are virtually unknown, with most estimates coming from captive observations. Known lifespans for seahorse species range from about one year in the smallest species to an average of three to five years for the larger species.
Fewer than five infant seahorses in every 1,000 survive to adulthood, which helps explain why the litters are so large, said James Anderson, manager of the seahorse program at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
The answer is that male seahorses, like all other male animals, produce small, mobile gametes (sperm), whereas female seahorses produce fewer, larger, energy-rich gametes (eggs).
Answer and Explanation: Seahorses are not one of those animals who change their sex. The female lays the eggs and the male carries the fertilized eggs on his back. They remain male and female.
The female seahorse deposits her eggs into the male seahorse's brood pouch, where they are fertilized. The male protects, aerates and osmoregulates the developing embryos through pregnancy before releasing them as independent young (Stölting & Wilson, 2007; Vincent & Sadler, 1995; Whittington & Friesen, 2020).