← Nat Theo Nature Lessons Rooted in the Bible
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Have you downloaded the free coloring sheet for this lesson? Click the link in our Show Notes to print and color along as you listen. And join the Nat Theo Club at the link in our Show Notes to receive a full lesson and activity guide and a bonus video of content every single week so you can dive deeper into every lesson. Explore God's Wild and Wonderful World in the Nat Theo club@aaron lyneum.com club or at the link in our Show Notes.
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Hello world. Wake me up to another good Good morning. Time to go.
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Are you ready to explore God's wild and wonderful world? Welcome to the naptheo Podcast. I'm your host Erin Lyneum. I'm a certified master naturalist, Bible teacher and author and I am so excited to dive into God's written word, the Bible and His created world with. Have you ever seen a creature that was so different from other creatures that you weren't even sure what it was? That is certainly the case with the animal that we are learning about today. Here are a few clues. This animal lives underwater. It has a long curly tail, its head is shaped like another animal that you might know about up on land, and it has a confusing nickname. Can you guess what this creature is? Today we are discovering God's designs in seahorses. Here is our trail map.
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Are you ready?
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We are going to learn what exactly is a seahorse? How is a seahorse like a vacuum cleaner? Why do male seahorses have babies? And how does God prepare us for growing up? Before we hit the trail, let's thank our sponsors who help make this lesson possible, including Apologia Curriculum When I want to learn about an ocean creature like today's topic the Seahorse I Reach Straight for the Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day book by Apologia. This course has taught my family so many wild and wonderful things about God's underwater world through an easy to understand conversational tone, vivid images, helpful diagrams, and hands on activities that help us remember everything we are learning. Learn about sea turtles, barnacles, dolphins, sea slugs, jellyfish, and so many more underwater wonders while growing in faith. Join the adventure with Apologia's science courses at the link in our show notes or@apologia.com it is so sad when a good book comes to an end, isn't it? Sometimes we just want them to keep going so we can enjoy the story longer. Well, you don't have to worry about that with the Sherwood Kids Audio app, because when one great story comes to an end, you can click play right away on the Next one the Sherwood Kids Audio App gives you instant access to over 5,000 wholesome and trusted audiobooks, ebooks, podcasts and read alongs with new content added regularly. Sherwood is the perfect solution for endless stories without any strange agendas attached. Save 20% and get a free speaker with an annual membership using the code nat20@sherwoodkids.com or at the link in our Show Notes. It's time for our trivia question. What is a baby seahorse called a pup, B fry, c calf or D kid? Again, what is a baby seahorse called a pup, B fry, c calf or D kid? Take a guess and we will find out at the end of today's lesson. Annethio Club members after this lesson, click over to the bonus video. I'll show you videos I have taken of different aquariums and seahorses and we will learn how God designed seahorses to change colors. Find that bonus video in your Nat Theo Club dashboard or the link in our show Notes. Here's a recent review from one of our listeners, Nico says, I have learned so much from this podcast. I'm so glad you are learning about God's wild and wonderful world. Nico, thanks for tuning in. And for your review listeners, please take a moment today to leave a rating and written review on Apple Podcasts. All right, let's hit the trail. Seahorses have their own unique style. They certainly stand out in the ocean or in an aquarium exhibit. A lot of times when we see a creature that we don't know, our minds begin to sort it into some kind of category. Let me show you how this works. I'm going to describe a few creatures and I want you to guess what kind of creature it might be. Are you ready? Here's the first creature. This creature is small, maybe about the size of your fingernail, or even smaller. It could be a bright color, or it could even be shiny. It has six legs and it has antennas sticking out from its head. It can also fly. Do you know what this creature is? It's a beetle. All right, here's our next creature. This creature can also fly. It's fuzzy. It might be found around flowers or maybe also around your food during a picnic outside. It is yellow and it has big eyes made of many tiny lenses. Do you think you might know what this creature is? It is a bee. Okay, we're one more creature. This creature jumps to get where it needs to go. It twitches its nose or moves it up and down or side to side. It has large eyes and it is very soft do you know what this creature is? It is a rabbit. Even if we don't know exactly what type of beetle, bee or rabbit we see, we can at least sort it into those big categories and begin discovering what it might be. We become better and better at this the more we learn about God's wild and wonderful world. But the seahorse can certainly stump us. It looks very different from most other creatures. We can gather some information like that it lives in the ocean, so it's not a land animal. But is it like a jellyfish or maybe like a stingray or an eel? Seahorses might not look like it, but they are true fish. When we think about fish, we can sort them into two big Chondrichthys and bony fish. Chondrichthes are fish that do not have bones. Instead of a skeleton made from bones, they their bodies have shape and structure because of cartilage. Cartilage is strong tissue that is flexible. It protects and supports bones and joints. Human noses and ears have cartilage inside. That's why you can kind of bend them back and forth. Chondrichthes fish include sharks, rays and skates. They are fish and they use gills to breathe, but they don't have bones. Most other fish fall into a bigger category of bony fish. Their skeleton is made of bones and seahorses belong to this category. They may look different from a goldfish or a salmon or a trout or a grouper or a clownfish, but they are fish. If they look so different, what do you think makes them a bony fish? Well, they have a bony skeleton, they swim using fins, they are cold blooded and they breathe through gills. But even in the bony fish category, seahorse are unique. They don't have scales like other fish do. Instead, they have bony plates that interlock around their entire body, kind of like armor. So they have a normal backbone like other bony fish, but also bony plates of armor around their body for extra protection, action and structure. We learned that seahorses are bony fish in the fish category. There are smaller categories that we can sort fish into to see how God made them special. Seahorses are in a small category or genus of fish called hippocampus. Hippocampus comes from the Greek language and it means horse sea monster. Isn't that kind of fun? Of course it is not a monster, it is a fish. And a very unique one indeed. The hippocampus category has only seahorses in it. But how many different types or species of seahorses do you think there are? That is a bit hard to say, because species that we didn't know about before are being discovered now. And seahorses can be tricky to identify as they change colors and camouflage themselves. But it's likely that there are around 46 to 50 different types of seahorses. That is a lot of unique and beautiful seahorse designs. Do you remember what makes seahorses different from other bony fish? They have bony plates of armor instead of scales. But that is not the only unique thing about them. Seahorses don't have teeth and they also don't have a stomach, Not a normal stomach like most other fish and creatures have anyway. Instead, they have a simple tube like gut for processing food. But this means that food does not stay in their body very long. In the wild, seahorses snack all day long. Can you imagine having to eat all day long? Maybe you do eat throughout the day because you're growing bigger and you're active and you need energy from your food. But seahorses do this because their food doesn't hang out in a stomach being processed, since they don't have stomachs like we do. Because their food moves quickly through them, they need to constantly eat. What do you think a seahorse eats? They are meat eaters and they enjoy tiny creatures like plankton and small crustaceans. God built seahorses just right to eat all day long because they are built kind of like a vacuum cleaner. My family sometimes jokes that our dog is like a vacuum cleaner because when we bring her inside after our family has eaten a meal, she runs right to the table and begins snacking on any crumbs that might have been dropped on the floor. But a seahorse is like a vacuum cleaner in a different way. Their nose looks and acts like a vacuum hose. Their mouth is at the end of their long nose, and they use it to quickly suck up food. Just like your vacuum cleaner sucks up dirt from the carpet. The food goes into the seahorse's tube like gut and through their body very quickly, so they have to keep on eating. Has your parent or caregiver ever asked you to slow down while eating a meal? Well, no one has ever told that to a seahorse. They are some of the fastest eaters of all animals. Seahorses are pivot feeders. Pivot feeding is a way that some fish, like seahorses, catch tiny animals in the water very quickly before their prey can escape and get away. They begin by sneaking up slowly and quietly so that their prey does not notice them. Or the seahorse can camouflage itself and stay hidden from its prey and wait for the prey to come to them. Then in a split second, it snaps its head upward. That quick head flip is the pivot and it opens its mouth at the end of its jaw, which creates a suction effect like a vacuum, pulling the prey right into its mouth. It is so fast because the fish stores up a spring like energy in its body, kind of like pulling back on a rubber band, and then releases it all at once for that quick snap and gulp. If you were to watch a seahorse while it pivot feeds, you probably could not even see what was happening unless you took a slow motion video. They eat faster than our eyes can see. God designed the seahorse with this pivot feeding strategy so it can get all the food it needs throughout the day to stay alive and well. So seahorses do not have scales or teeth or even a stomach. They do have bony armor and a vacuum like snout. But perhaps the most interesting thing about a seahorse is how it has babies. This brings up a great question from one of our listeners.
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My name is Charlie and I live in Alabama. And I want to know why do male seahorse and male pipefish have babies, not the females?
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That is a great question, Charlie. Why do male seahorses and male pipefish have babies instead of the females? Seahorses and another fish like them called a pipefish, along with another fish called sea dragons, have a special way of having babies. The males or the boys carry the eggs and hatch the babies inside of them instead of the females or the girls. Here is how a baby seahorse comes into the world. When a male and female seahorse are ready to have babies, they do a swimming dance in the water together. The female then puts her eggs into a special pouch on the male called a brood pouch. The brood pouch is where the eggs stay safe. Once the female places her eggs in the male's brood pouches, the male fertilizes them so babies can form inside the eggs. And the male incubates the eggs as the babies inside grow and get ready to hatch. You can think of the brood patch as a little nursery where the babies inside their eggs are kept safe until they are ready to hatch into the wild and wonderful underwater world. And we are not only talking about a few babies. Depending on the species, a seahorse couple can have between 100 and 200 eggs. But there are cases of over 1,000 eggs at a time. The eggs stay inside the male's brood pouch for around two to four weeks. And then when the babies are ready to come out, the father's muscles contract or squeeze tightly and kind of shoot the babies out into the watery world. It's really amazing to see the tiny seahorse babies come out fully formed and independent. They look like miniature versions of their parents. So why do male seahorses incubate the babies? One reason might be because it saves time and allows a seahorse couple to have many more babies. You see, sadly, many baby seahorses do not survive. They are a tasty and nutritious snack for many underwater creatures. But by having lots and lots of babies, more can survive. And when the female seahorse places her eggs inside the male's brood pouch, she can begin developing more eggs right away. So while the male seahorse incubates one set of eggs, the female is getting the next set ready. This is an efficient way for a seahorse to have many, many, many seahorse babies. It's a very unique way to have babies in nature. God's design in most creatures is for a female to grow the babies and give birth. But even though seahorses are a bit different, we still see God's unique design of male and female in seahorses. It is the female seahorse that has the eggs, and the male seahorse fertilizes the eggs with something called sperm from his body. They both have their unique roles, all designed by an amazing creator, God. I want to share one more thing with you about seahorse families, Something I found so special when I was learning about them. When the eggs are inside the dad seahorse's brood pouch, he is not only keeping them safe, but also getting them ready for the vast ocean outside the brood pouch. Imagine this. You are a tiny seahorse baby about the length of a ladybug. You feel safe and cozy inside the brood pouch nursery, but then you're suddenly shot out super fast into the open ocean. That would be quite the shock. But God designed a dad's brood pouch to get the babies ready for this huge life change. When the eggs are inside the brood pouch nursery, the water inside the pouch slowly changes to be more like the water outside the brood pouch in the wide open ocean. This is similar to when I bring new fish home from the fish store and place them into my fish tank. I don't just open the bag they came in and dump them into the fish tank. That would be too shocking and could harm them. Instead, I carefully place the bag with the new fish inside into the tank. The bag floats in the tank. This allows the temperature of the water in the fish bag from the store to begin to match the temperature of the water water in my tank. I also use a cup to add a little bit of water from the tank into the bag. I add a little more water every hour or so. This helps the new fish get used to the new water. So when I finally put the fish right into the tank, the fish is ready. This is what the seahorse dad's brood pouch does. The fluid inside the dad's brood pouch sucker slowly changes from being like his body fluids to being like the seawater outside. So when he shoots his babies out into the ocean, they are ready. Just as the brood pouch on a dad's seahorse prepares his babies for the wide and wonderful world outside, God prepares us to grow up and live in his wild and wonderful world. As you grow older, you will be given more responsibilities until one day you are considered an adult. You might move out of your home, go to college or get a job. You might even get married and perhaps have a family of your own one day. God has different plans and purposes for each of us, but whatever those plans and purposes are, they are wild and wonderful and he prepares us for them. God doesn't want us to become adults and be shocked by the world around us. Instead, like seahorse eggs in a brood pouch, God carefully gets us ready and prepares us to live in the world you see. Just like ocean waters, the world around us is quite wonderful, but can also hold challenges and dangers. God knows this and he gets us ready to face whatever we will encounter. Psalm chapter 139:16 says, you saw my body as it was formed. All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old. God is not stuck in time like we are. He knows the future. He knows everything that we will face. And as a loving father, he is preparing us for what we cannot yet see. In the book of Jeremiah, God spoke powerful words to the people of Israel. In God's words to them, we can glimpse his heart for us, his children. Listen carefully to Jeremiah 29:11 for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Maybe you are excited to grow up, but maybe you're also a little bit afraid. I remember as I was getting older, especially when I became a teenager, and I began wondering things like, what does God want me to do? What if I choose the wrong path? How can I know what his will is? These are normal and good questions to have and they show that you really care about following God. But please hear me out. You do not have to be afraid of the future. Remember, God has good plans for your life. Plans full of hope. Keep following Jesus. Spend time in God's Word, the Bible. Practice praying to God every day and throughout the day. Spend time with others who love and follow Jesus. As you do these things, God will continue to make your way ahead clear. Like seahorse babies in the brood pouch, God is preparing you for everything ahead. If you are ever afraid or unsure of what is happening in life, remember God knows your story, every chapter of it. He is preparing you and he goes with you into every circumstance. You can pray this prayer from Psalm 4310 every day as you continue growing up in God's ways. Teach me to do what you want because you are are my God. Let your good spirit lead me on level ground. It's time to answer a question from one of our listeners. Here is today's question.
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Hi, my name is isla. I am 8 years old. I am from Great Falls, Montana and I want to know how ravens imitate sound.
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Thanks for your great question Isla, and also I heard that you are no longer 8 and that you had a birthday yesterday. Happy 9th birthday. I hope it was wild and wonderful and I know that God has good plans for you in the year ahead. Isla I love listening to birds imitate sounds. God designed many types of birds with this ability, including ravens. Ravens can copy the sounds that they hear in nature like other birds calls or in a city like traffic sounds. They can also copy humans words like parrots do. Ravens use a special voice box that God gave them called a Syrinx to copy complex sounds. The Syrinx has a double set of vocal cords. Some songbirds use this special voice box to sing two different sounds at the same time, even a rising note and a falling note at the same time. The Syrinx is a very special and unique design God made in some birds and we don't see this design anywhere else in nature. It is super special. Thanks for your great question, Isla. Stay curious about God's wild and wonderful world and Nat Theo Club members. Remember after this lesson to click over to the bonus video where I'm going to show you video clips I took at an aquarium of seahorses and we will learn how seahorses change colors. Find that bonus video in your Nat Theo Club dashboard or the link in our show notes. It's time to answer our trivia question. What is a baby seahorse called? A pup? B Fry c Calf or D Kid? The answer is B fry. Most baby fish once hatched and able to eat on their own are called fry, including young seahorses. Now it's your turn to explore. Go look for creatures taking care of their babies Right now in the spring is the best time of year to do this. Can you find bird parents bringing food back to their chicks? Or frogs or salamanders laying eggs in safe places close to the shore? Or maybe a deer mama leading her spotted fawn to a safe resting place? Watch animal parents and thank God for designing them just right to care for their young so we can have many, many more wild and wonderful creatures. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this lesson on seahorses, please take a moment to send it to a friend and subscribe. Rate and review Nat Theo wherever you listen. Until next time, keep exploring God's wild and and wonderful world.
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We are all looking for adventure. We are all looking for adventure we are all looking for adventure we are all looking for adventure.