"THE SEA HORSE" "In spite of its name and strange look, the sea horse is only an ordinary fish, never more than 6 inches long off the French coast." "Its body is covered with scutes whose pointed nodes give it a medieval look." "Its top resembles a horse, its bottom a caterpillar." "It is the only aquatic vertebrate to swim standing up." "This upright position gives it a slightly pompous air." "It is also the only fish to have, like a chameleon, a prehensile tail which enables it to attach itself to seaweed or another seahorse's neck." "Unlike a monkey, a victim of gravity, it does not get dizzy hanging upside down." "Normally brick-coloured, dark green or grey, it can turn white and even become piebald." "The protuberance, like the chest of a horse, corresponds to the front of a fish and likewise contains all the organs." "Here is the air bladder, a very precise stabilizer." "If it is out of order, the sea horse loses its balance." "The respiratory organs, shaped like a powder-puff, are typical of the family to which the sea horse belongs." "Seen from behind, we can see how its breathing raises and lowers little bones in its skull." "Its pouting lips, which conceal a lack of teeth, give it a bored look." "Its darting eyes turn this into an expression of anxiety." "Some sea horses have horns both on the head and back." "It uses a dorsal fin for horizontal movements and a fin on each side for vertical movements." "The tail is used only to balance the sea horse, never to propel it." "Strangest of all is the male's abdominal pouch in which the female lays, at intervals, 200 eggs." "Here we see some pretty ballet steps for two or more dancers." "The male fertilizes the eggs he receives from the female." "It is he who performs the female function of nourishing the embryos in his pouch." "After five to six weeks the male goes into genuine labour." "His darting eyes emphasize the expression of anxiety." "He jumps and wriggles." "His breathing accelerates." "Finally he sucks in his stomach and flattens the pouch." "The expulsion begins." "As very few embryos come out at a time, delivery takes hours." "Dissecting the male's pouch, one can see the tissue which maintains the eggs in a network of blood vessels necessary to the life of the embryo." "After the birth, the tissue again becomes ordinary connective tissue." "In the pouch, the embryo has no mouth." "It has a round head with big eyes." "The body, as thin as a thread, ends with a ringed tail." "The enormous nutritive ball, attached to its stomach, is slowly absorbed." "The body takes shape." "The mouth appears." "It looks like a King Charles spaniel." "The outline of the scutes appears." "At high magnification, we can see the strange patterns formed by the coloured cells." "The heart..." "Soon the snout grows longer." "Here we can see the flap which closes it." "The tail contrasts with the rest of the body by its mobility." "The eyes are still very big for the head." "The miniature adult is finally formed." "It moves vertically, its head at a right angle to the body." "This is the position required for an easy delivery." "By artificially slowing the heart, we can see the contractions of the auricle, the ventricle and the bulb of the aorta." "The rays of the dorsal fin are independent." "The sea horses already know how to cling to each other and play tug-of-war in groups of two or three." "Even though the pouch is now empty, the male is still suffering from contractions produced by secretions from the internal wall of the pouch." "As the sea horse advances slowly, it cannot flee in case of an emergency nor can it hide rapidly under algae or sand." "Given their dignified stance, a headlong flight, common to other fish, would hardly be permitted." "These animals feed on microscopic organisms, crustaceans, larvae which they catch with a snap of the mouth." "One can imagine the quantities needed to sustain certain sea horses off the coasts of Australia and Japan which measure up to 23 inches." "Maybe the sea horse is little threatened by other animals." "This would explain why it does not react to even the most unusual events." "One cannot help but imagine this literally unique upright sea creature with limbs like those of a biped." "Subtitling TITRA FILM Paris"