Ornate Ghost Pipefish

Yesterday, I played a bit more fallout 3 then I probably should of. I found a stupid policy or lack thereof thing at work that I can hopefully secretly correct, but beginning work on it caused me to get stuck there really late. I had no motivation for art when I got home so I killed some fire breathing ants. Today I also need to finish shopping for relatives.

art goal 16hrs

Today

mold skull

finish titmouse

work on dragon

Animal

photo credit Stephen Childs

The ornate ghost pipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus) is a small relative of seahorses from the Western Pacific. They spend most of their time hiding among crinoids and eating very small invertebrates. The females have a modified pelvic fin that they use as a pouch to carry young. They have a very wide range of color variation between individuals and can range from black and red to almost almost pure white. They spend a long time in their larval phase in deeper water and then come closer to shore when they are ready to reproduce their color variation may depend on what soft coral or crinoids they were hiding in at that time. I was not able to find any resources on how their color development works so if someone reading this happens to know about a paper on this I would be interested to see it. On the other hand every ichthyologist and their brother seems to want to write papers on that pelvic fin pouch.

Video of an Ornate Ghost Pipe fish moving around