Fancy a look at some Australian big bellies, or Hippocampus Ab dominalis, as they are known to the polite? You can see them at the National Sea Life centre in Bray, Co Wicklow. They are part of the Kingdom of the Seahorse display which opened there yesterday.
Being Australian they have a not-unfamiliar mating ritual. To attract a Sheila, they inflate their bellies with pints - well, seawater in their case. They will love it here. However, they have habits no Irish big belly would contemplate.
They become "pregnant". The female deposits her eggs in his pouch, he hatches them and he rears them - up to 1,500 at a time. And when the little bellies leave his pouch after six to eight weeks they rush back in there again every time anyone looks crooked at them.
Mr Seahorse is the mother and father of a parent while Ms Sea horse skives about swilling it with the girls. He does everything. Not really fitting for a full-blooded Australian male, is it?
To add to the confusion, the Australian big bellies share an aquarium at Sea Life with a number of pipefish, also known as "straight" seahorses. Presumably these are seahorses whose males swill it while the females do everything. They are also linear in shape.
There have only been six recorded sightings of seahorses around our coasts, but we have a native breed, the charmingly named longsnouted seahorses, which they are, with a long spiky "mane".
Seahorses are most populous in tropical waters, in coral reefs and seagrasses.
There are slender seahorses, yellow/oceanic seahorses and tiger tail seahorses among the 35 known species. Even golden seaponies. All small colourful creatures, from 20cm to 30cm in length. They are also fragile and don't like stress, but normally live for one year for some species, or five to eight years for others.
And they have no stomach for anything, so a seahorse's life is a perpetual search for tiny shrimp. Craftily, they anchor themselves by the tail and hide until the unsuspecting shrimp comes a-calling. Then they pounce. And there he is gone, one shrimp fewer.
Seahorses move fast, too. They propel themselves with a dorsal fin which can swish at up to 35 beats a second. And they have very good eyesight - a seahorse derby might be an idea.
They are in danger, however, from pollution on the reefs, from those who use them as ornaments and from the Chinese. They dry them, powder them and use them as medicine for asthma, incontinence and impotence. Viagra might put an end to that.
They are shy creatures. A notice in Bray asks people not to use flash photography, which frightens them. So they just go around between meals - six a day - their heads low with many apologies, looking like circus unicyclists. Horses of a different colour.
