{"product_id":"coffee-table-book-of-seahorses-paperback","title":"Coffee Table Book of: Seahorses (Paperback)","description":"\u003cp\u003eCoffee Table Book of: Seahorses is a large format book in colour of seahorses and the sea's other upright and camouflaged oddities beside them, printed edge to edge, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: seahorses, leafy and weedy seadragons, ghost pipefish, pipefish, pygmy seahorses and frogfish in their reefs, kelp and seagrass meadows.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the centre of the book is the seahorse itself, seen whole in its habitat and in close studies of one feature at a time. It swims upright, which almost no other fish does, holding its head at a right angle to its trunk. The snout is a fused bone tube with no working jaw, and the two eyes swivel independently in their turrets. With no scales anywhere, the animal wears its skeleton on the outside as rings of bony armour, while a square prehensile tail with no tail fin does all the holding.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eClose plates follow the working anatomy: the five pointed bony coronet on top of the skull, the tiny trapdoor mouth at the snout tip, the single small gill pore behind the cheek, the soft dorsal fin fluttering in its saddle on the back, the delicate pectoral fins that steer the head, branching skin cirri that mimic weed, and the tapering tail tip taking its tightest curl around a seagrass blade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough the breeding season a pair greets daily on its small territory, linking tails and gliding above the seagrass. Here it is the male that carries the young: the female lays her eggs into his brood pouch, which seals shut until he bends and pumps to release hundreds of miniature upright young ready to grip the first fine stem they touch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShort notes run through the book, on how seahorses hunt, hold on and change colour, how males brood their young, and how seadragons, pipefish and frogfish live beside them: a seadragon's leaf shaped flaps do no swimming at all, while two nearly transparent fins do all the work, many seahorse pairs stay together all breeding season and greet each other every morning on their territory, a seahorse's tail is square in cross section rather than round, helping it grip stems and resist crushing, and in a breeding seahorse pair, the fish with the round swollen belly is the brooding male, not the female.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrinted in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cedar Pine Editions","offers":[{"title":"Perfect Bound","offer_id":68253180330288,"sku":"9671456009155","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0262\/2357\/5085\/files\/9671456009155.jpg?v=1793769029","url":"https:\/\/www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk\/products\/coffee-table-book-of-seahorses-paperback","provider":"The Great British Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}