West African Seahorse Filmed - First Time Ever

As tempting as it is for me to write about the madness of Africa's political environment every day, sometimes I need to discuss a slightly lighter note--animals!

I know that most of you think of Africa and you think LIONS:

Oh yeah, I took this picture.

 Or GIRAFFES:

and this one.

Or some other such safari animal:

Chobe National Park, Botswana, photographer: yours truly

But something that Africa is sliiiiightly less well-known for (okalotless) is... SEAHORSES!

The West African seahorse, to be specific:

The West African Seahorse!

The West African seahorse, hippocampus algiricus, is found all along West Africa, from Senegal to the Ivory Coast, and even as far south as DRC or Angola.

Obligatory reminder of where West Africa is

Little to no research has been done on it, and it had never been filmed in the wild before this past week. Research from Project Seahorse says that 600,000 of them are exported from western Africa every year, in dried form for use in traditional medicine, usually to Asia. The actual video is short and clearly filmed by a bobbing swimmer (Kate West, grad student researcher of Project Seahorse), so it's no Planet Earth, but it gives you a good idea: Here's the seahorse on Youtube

Random Kate Thoughts: Seahorses are strange animals, kind of like mini-dinosaurs, and these ones can get up to 7 inches long. If you watch the video, their main motions are a kind of flexing of the head and tail for propulsion, making them significantly less threatening than a lion, or even a giraffe, which could in theory stomp you to death. These little guys are instead being sold to China for all kinds of crazy purposes, so while it's great that more research is being done on Africa's wildlife, this might be an endangered species, so there is clearly more work on the way. All the more reason for me to continue my dreams of visiting Senegal!