On Valentine’s Day, the Gardaland Sea Life Aquarium gives a magical experience: the courtship dance of the marine horses. These fascinating fish, a symbol of loyalty and love, stage an extraordinary choreography, telling a timeless love story in the waves
When love is tinged with blue: the courtship of the marine cavallucci
While on February 14, Feast of loversthe world is filled with hearts and flowers, an equally fascinating courtship takes place in marine depths, but wrapped in mystery and poetry. In Castelnuovo del Garda, in the province of Verona, the Gardaland SEA LIFE Aquarium It offers visitors the opportunity to attend an extraordinary ritual, where the protagonists are not young suspended between passion and tragedy but marine horses who intertwine their destinies in a refined and harmonious dance.
And it is curious that all this happens right here, a few kilometers from the city of Romeo and Giulietta, where Shakespeare has set the most famous romantic history of all time. But if in the Renaissance Verona relationships were threatened by families in war, lost letters and tragic misunderstandings, in the submerged kingdom everything takes place with an impeccable grace. No obstacles, no duel, just a perfect natural balance.
In the aquarium, between suggestive scenarios and settings that reproduce the magic of the abysses, three species of marine horses – Hippocampus Kuda, Hippocampus Barbouri and Hippocampus Reidi – try every day in a refined aquatic ballet. Their courtship translates into synchronized movements and delicate gestures, a choreography that not only celebrates the agreement and the link between two individuals, but helps to synchronize their biological rhythms.
Secret ingredient? Loyalty, a rather rare virtue in the human kingdom, but which for marine horses, bone fish of the Syngnathidae family, is a rule of life.
But the real peculiarity that distinguishes marine cavallucci is the revolutionary role in reproduction.
A unique biological model
If in the animal kingdom, the care of the offspring is often entrusted to females, in hippocampus this dynamic is completely reversed. Which makes them a unique case among the vertebrates. It is the male to carry on pregnancy, taking on an active role in the gestation and protection of offspring.
The reproductive process begins with an elaborate courtship, in which harmonious dance is accompanied by an extraordinary ability to change body coloring. This chromatic variation, made possible by the presence of chromatophores in the skin, performs a dual function: on the one hand it contributes to mimicry, allowing the horses to adapt to the surrounding environment and reduce the risk of predation; on the other, it represents an effective tool for social communication, used to report the availability for mating and strengthen the link between the partners.
During this seductive dance, the couple approaches, giving it gently and keeping contact for several minutes or even hours, until you reach a perfect harmony. Once the bond has been consolidated, the crucial phase of reproduction takes place: the female transfers the fertilized eggs inside the ventral bag of the male, an extraordinarily evolved structure that acts as a biological incubator.
A fast gestation
The duration of gestation varies according to the species and environmental conditions, but generally oscillates between 10 and 45 days. During this period, the male actively regulates salinity and gaseous exchanges within the pounding, ensuring an ideal environment for embryonic development.
At the end of the pregnancy, childbirth takes place, an extraordinary event in which the male expels with hundreds of muscle contractions, sometimes thousands, of small completely trained specimens. Once released in the water, infants face the challenges of the marine world alone, without any subsequent parental care.
A unique case of paternal investment: a gender equality “bestial”
This extraordinary reproductive model completely overturns the traditional “genre roles” observed in most animal species.
Such a level of paternal involvement is extremely rare between the vertebrates and represents a adaptive evolution that maximizes the survival of the offspring in complex environments such as Fanserogame meadows Marine and coral reefs.
In short, marine cavallucci are an emblematic example of male parental parental parentaram care.
But let’s go back to Gardaland.
The Gardaland Mission Sea Life: protect the dance of love
In addition to being an extraordinary show, the courtship dance of the marine horses is also a warning: these animals, so fragile and unique, are threatened by pollution, indiscriminate fishing and the destruction of marine habitats. Gardaland Sea Life Aquarium actively engages in their protection, adhering to conservation programs such as theEuropean Studbook Foundation (ESF) and the LIFE ‘European Sharks’ Project.
Thanks to these efforts, in recent years the aquarium has seen the birth of 108 specimens of Hippocampus Reidi, a species at risk.
In short, between themed tanks and suggestive settings, the visit to the water park becomes a journey between beauty and awareness, an opportunity to reflect on how precious and fragile the marine ecosystem is. Because love, the real one, is also respect and protection: a message that marine horses teach us with their timeless dance.