r/Awwducational • u/MistWeaver80 • Dec 21 '21
Article Pipefish, sea horses, & sea dragons belong to a family in which the males get pregnant. Male pipefish spontaneously abort or divert fewer resources to their embryos if they've mated with an unattractive female, or if they've already raised a large group of young in an earlier pregnancy, study found
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u/MeganMess Dec 21 '21
I'm wondering about the unattractive part too. What's an ugly piperfish?
Asking for a friend.
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Dec 22 '21
Attractiveness in this context is not purely synonymous with beauty (as we humans tend to define the word), an unattractive female simply is less desirable because of signs of weakness.
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u/FlutterCordLove Dec 22 '21
That’s great and all, but wtf am I looking at
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Dec 22 '21
A Hairy Ghost Pipefish (photo by John Magee)
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u/FlutterCordLove Dec 23 '21
Ooh! Thank you!!! I didn’t know if it was an actual creature, I tbh thought it was just the circulatory system of a seahorse and I’m like ???
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u/WeddingCrackers-ie Dec 22 '21
Its like I’m looking at the nervous system of a seahorse without all the extra meat/bone/ skin
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u/supertucci Dec 22 '21
"Why don't they just call that the female seahorse?"
Jim gaffigan
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u/okazu12 Dec 22 '21
Because the male produces the sperm and the female produces the egg, regardless of who carries the fertilized eggs. A male seahorse is still male. Pregnant isnt even the right word.
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Dec 22 '21
Not disagreeing (never had a reason to consider this, so I'm open) but what does constitute being pregnant then?
Do I have to create AND hold the egg, or just let the fertilized egg reach maturation inside my body?
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u/winedogmom88 Dec 22 '21
Just letting a fertilized egg grow is incubation.
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Dec 22 '21
But caring the children to term is being pregnant, as incubating a fertilized egg within a body is... pregnancy?
I think we're too attached to where the egg is originally coming from in this definition. If that's the case, then a human surrogate isn't pregnant with another's fertilized eggs, she's just incubating them?
I think the act of delivery being a part of the total action should constitute being "pregnant".
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u/melissylim Dec 24 '21
I feel kind of stupid that I never looked into this. Like, I always knew about the males being pregnant, but for some reason never looked into it. Thanks guys. I feel smarter.
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u/bull0143 Dec 22 '21
There is a third criteria here for pipefish. The male has something similar to a placenta that is used to provide nourishment to the developing embryos, so it is more than simply holding the eggs until maturation. For this scenario, calling it pregnancy or an equivalent word like hemotrophic viviparity seems appropriate.
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Dec 22 '21
Thanks, I was thinking it would have to go in that direction, as otherwise our definition is only linked to depositing generic material for pregnancy (I mean, it's not, obviously).
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u/bull0143 Dec 22 '21
Yes, at this point the distinction is more focused on trophic activity and whether eggs are carried inside the body of one of the parents. The "Types of Reproduction and Pregnancy" section has a good overview of the different categories:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_in_fish
I realize the explanation of hemotrophic viviparity specifically says "female" but that's because the definition hasn't caught up to what has been observed in pipefish yet. The actual mechanism of nutrition delivery is the same.
Seahorse pregnancy, on the other hand, is considered ovoviviparity because there is no trophic activity/placenta involved.
Also, for anyone interested, the scientific community has referred to "male pregnancy" in seahorses and pipefish in recent studies:
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Dec 21 '21
So men can get abortions
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Dec 22 '21
How people get funding for these studies is amazing. Not that I disapprove of science and research
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u/CeylonSiren Dec 22 '21
Usually when applying for grants you still need to tie in a human need topic. For example- understanding of other lifeforms is a basic interest to the advancement of our species or understanding of critical ecosystems and its inhabitants. There’s a lot in science we don’t understand and therefore don’t know how important it is and it would be better to be informed than sorry.
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u/TorakTheDark Dec 22 '21
Pregnant is not the right word here.
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u/RK800-50 Dec 22 '21
It is
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u/TorakTheDark Dec 22 '21
That’s like calling a kangaroo with a joey in it’s pouch pregnant.
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u/RK800-50 Dec 22 '21
from this very comment section
Pregnancy is about carrying the egg(s) to term
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u/TorakTheDark Dec 22 '21
That doesn’t help your cause at all, that comment just explains that male seahorses aren’t female?
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Dec 22 '21
Ahh I know this one... the insulation glassdragon, a canivore ambush predatore indigenous to the rivers of madagascar. It primarily foodsource is mephanphetamine and catalytic converters from decomposed mammoth bones. Its main method of defense is to latch on the the eyeballs of its pray and drill through its brain using the only case found in sealife of imposible thumbs.
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u/trynafigurelifeout Dec 22 '21
If the male of a species get pregnant, what qualities make it a male? Why don’t we consider these females?
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u/bull0143 Dec 22 '21
Because the female still lays the eggs, and the male fertilizes the eggs with sperm. The only difference is that the male carries the fertilized eggs in his belly, instead of the female.
Fathers care for eggs/fry in some other species of fish too. Several varieties of wild betta fish are mouthbrooders. The female will lay eggs the male will fertilize them, and then the male will carry the eggs in his mouth for a month (without eating anything) until the fry are big enough to swim on their own. Male ancistrus guard caves; a female only stays long enough to breed and lay eggs, then she leaves and the male will carefully guard the eggs and fry.
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u/winedogmom88 Dec 22 '21
They don’t get pregnant. The female has the eggs. The male has sperm. They do the seahorse sezzy thing and the eggs end up in the male’s pouch. He just incubates.
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u/yogacowgirlspdx Dec 22 '21
eli5: why do they call them male if they carry pregnancy?
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u/Alle_Vater Dec 22 '21
Because they carry and produce androgens and not estrogens, it’s the primary sex hormones that define sex, not external body parts or how anything actually looks.
Hell, the vagina on a hyena looks like a penis but she 100% delivers baby hyenas through it.
Androgens being male sex hormones.
Estrogens being female sex hormones.
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u/pugapooh Dec 22 '21
So he will breed with the unattractive female but won’t have her babies. Hmmm.
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u/SBrooks103 Dec 22 '21
In the case of seahorses, I believe that the male carries the eggs in a pouch, but their still laid by the female. It's sort of similar to some birds where the male sits on the eggs. I don't know if that would technically be called pregnant.
I don't know about the other species.
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u/DesiBail Dec 22 '21
We need a attribute based nomenclature instead of binary male/female for all species in general, because this is confusing.
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u/Insatiable_fear Dec 21 '21
First time ever seeing a seahorse like this.