In seahorse mating pairs it ’s the male who does the ponderous lifting during pregnancy . They can store thousands of embryos in their brood sac , which finally spurt out in a spray of teensy tiny “ newborn ” seahorses . Until now , scientists had no mind if or how these embryo were feed in during their gestation but a new field published in theJournal of Comparative Physiologyhas uncovered that these hard - work fathers do indeed feed their many , many young .
Led by the University of Sydney ( USYD ) Honours student Zoe Skalkos in collaboration with Dr James Van Dyke at La Trobe University and Dr Camilla Whittington from USYD ’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences , the study adds free weight to existing genetic grounds of male seahorses ' role in feed developing embryos . It institute the first experimental grounds of " patrotrophy " ( dads transferring food to their babe ) .
The team compared the dry weight of newly fertilizedHippocampus abdominalis , or mountain - belly out seahorse , eggs with those of fully originate neonates and looked at the lipid content at the start and destruction of the embryos ’ development . Their results picture there was no decrease in lipid flock suggesting that the resources being used up by the develop embryos were being replaced by the brooding father .
seahorse belong to to a group called the syngnathid Fish , alongside pipefishes and sea dragons , and they are the only vertebrates known to skill to demonstrate male gestation . Like a tiny marine kangaroo , the expectant fathers protect their offspring as they modernize inside a pouch on the front of their body . Little was known about the exact technicalities of what went on behind this brood pouch , but this research has successfully take a quick peep within , figuratively speaking . Not only do we now know the fathers feast their babies , but it ’s also reckon that they do this through a kind of placenta , similar to human pregnancy .
" This work adds to the growing grounds that male pregnancy in walrus could be as complex as female pregnancy in other beast , include ourselves , " said Dr Whittington in astatement . " We now roll in the hay that seahorse dads can enchant nutrient to the baby during maternity , and we call back they do this via a placenta . It ’s not exactly like a human placenta though – they do n’t have an umbilical cord , for object lesson . We need to do further histological work to confirm this . "
