Seahorse

Seahorses
Temporal range: Lower Miocene to present –
Short-snouted seahorse (Hippocampus hippocampus)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Syngnathiformes
Family: Syngnathidae
Subfamily: Hippocampinae
Genus: Hippocampus
Rafinesque, 1810[1][2]
Type species
Syngnathus hippocampus
Linnaeus, 1758
Species

see Species.

Synonyms

A seahorse (also written sea-horse and sea horse) is any of 46 species of small marine bony fish in the genus Hippocampus. "Hippocampus" comes from the Ancient Greek hippókampos (ἱππόκαμπος), itself from híppos (ἵππος) meaning "horse" and kámpos (κάμπος) meaning "sea monster"[4][5] or "sea animal".[6] Having a head and neck suggestive of a horse, seahorses also feature segmented bony armour, an upright posture and a curled prehensile tail.[7] Along with the pipefishes and seadragons (Phycodurus and Phyllopteryx) they form the family Syngnathidae.

  1. ^ Rafinesque Schmaltz, C. S. (1810). "G. Hippocampus". Caratteri di alcuni nuovi generi e nuove specie di animali e piante della Sicilia: con varie osservazioni sopra i medesimi. Palermo: Sanfilippo. p. 18.
  2. ^ Hippocampus Rafinesque, 1810, WoRMS
  3. ^ Whitley, Gilbert P. (1931). "New Names for Australian Fishes". The Australian Zoologist. 6 (4): 313.
  4. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0199206872.
  5. ^ ἱππόκαμπος, ἵππος, κάμπος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
  6. ^ Jarvis, Dr Peter (13 January 2020). The Pelagic Dictionary of Natural History of the British Isles: Descriptions of all Species with a Common Name. Pelagic Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-1-78427-196-1.
  7. ^ "sea horse or seahorse". dictionary.com. Retrieved 19 June 2016.

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