Seahorse suction power revealed in reports in Inside JEB 3 September 2021 and Journal of Experimental Biology 3 September 2021, doi: 10.1242/jeb.236430.
Seahorses use suction feeding to draw food in which involves a rapid expansion of their mouth cavity to force food into the mouth. Other kinds of ‘sucking’ fish use their swimming muscles to power this process. However, seahorses do not have the same swimming muscles as other fish as they do not use a tailfin to swim. Instead, seahorses feed by using an elastic powered movement of their head to generate suction.
Corrine Avidan of Tel Aviv University, Israel “wanted to understand how these unique fish with tiny mouths at the tip of skinny snouts could feed on some of the fastest prey in the oceans”. Avidan and Holzman measured the suction power generated by three species of sea horses in the Red Sea and found they could “generate suction flows that are 8 times faster than those of similar-sized fish”.
According to the researchers, “Seahorses, which have reduced swimming muscles, evolved a unique mechanism for elastic energy storage that powers their suction flows”.
Link: JEB
Editorial Comment: This is another sad example of an evolutionary “Just So” story, underwritten by the thought “if it exists it must have evolved”. So, come on, get serious evolutionists – how did evolving non-seahorses coordinate evolving elastic powered suction as they lost their fish tails along with their swimming muscles in such a way they were still able to feed while changing to a totally different body structure?
What this study really shows is that seahorses are well designed to be seahorses, able to feed efficiently while they swim in an upright position and use their tails to anchor themselves in the seaweed gardens where they live.
Our museum collection has some fabulous fossil specimens of the oldest sea horses, and there is no evidence seahorses were ever any other kind of fish which had a ‘normal’ tailfin and associated swimming muscles. The more we learn about seahorses, the more they confirm Genesis. They are brilliantly designed fish, created as a distinct kind, and have reproduced after their kind.
Creation Research News 15 September 2021
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