Pipefish

ocean creatures · odd-looking fish · small marine life

Tube-shaped bodies. Pipefishes have long, thin bodies that look like little pipes or straws. Their whole body is covered in bony rings that make them look super weird and wonderful.

Fused jaws together. The name pipefish comes from their special fused jaws, which means their upper and lower jaws are stuck together as one piece. This lets them suck up tiny food with their snout like a vacuum cleaner.

Close seahorse cousins. Pipefishes are in the same family as seahorses and seadragons, which means they're all related. Like their seahorse cousins, many pipefish fathers carry and protect the eggs, not the mothers.

Tiny food hunters. Pipefishes eat microscopic sea creatures and small crustaceans that they find near seagrass and seaweed. Because they're so slow swimmers, they sneak up on their prey very carefully.