Poseidon's Steed: The Story of Seahorses, From Myth to Reality

by Helen Scales

Book Overview

A fascinating journey with the sea creature that has captured human imagination for thousands of years

Poseidon's Steed trails the seahorse through secluded waters across the globe in a kaleidoscopic history that mirrors man's centuries-old fascination with the animal, sweeping from the reefs of Indonesia, through the back streets of Hong Kong, and back in time to ancient Greece and Rome. Over time, seahorses have surfaced in...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592405819
• ISBN13: 9781592405817
• Release Date: November 2010
• Publisher: Avery Publishing Group
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

It was Okay

It was okay. It had some nice details and was over all a sweet little book, but a lot of it was not abut horses and was instead about random things like Chinese Medicine and underwater photography. I found mys elf skipping a lot of it.

Everything you wanted to know about seahorses, but didn't know where to ask!

A beautiful book! Imagine these wonderful creatures living in the ocean- miniature horses with rolling eyes and tiny monkey's tails. It was the males that had babies - no animals do that anymore - and they changed color as if by magic and danced elegant dances every day with their faithful partners. This is how Helen Scales describes the passion of her life - seahorses; elegantly written, researched in depth, the book provides everything that one would want to know about seahorses. How did such a strange creature evolve? How does their genome look like? Not only is the biology covered in detail, Helen's researches the history starting from the Greeks, how our ancestors perceived them, covering all surviving documentation and paintings. Helen goes to the extent of looking at antiques which depict seahorses, with many interesting side stories such as the stolen seahorse brooch from the Lydian Horde in Turkey. Where would one find seahorses? What do they eat? Why is there a black market trade in seahorses? How is global warming affecting them? Find all these out in this charming and easy to read book. You wont regret buying this book.

DO GIVE THIS ONE A READ! I promise you that you will not be sorry!

Every so often you are fortunate enough to stumble across a book, purely by accident that is an absolute delight; a pleasurable pause in your life from which simply makes living better. This is one of those works. To be honest, I have never given seahorses much thought. Yes, I have seen their little bodies washed up on beaches around the world, seen pictures, gazed in disgust upon their dried remains in various Asian markets and gross little souvenir stands near our own now polluted gulf ...but never actually gave them much thought one way or the other. Now I love books on nature, travel, history, natural history, archeology, mythology and adventure. Hellen Scales offered each of these subjects up for my pleasure in this wonderful little book, Poseidon's Steed; The Story of Seahorses, from Myth to Reality. Good natural history, or nature writers are getting more and more difficult to come by these days but I must say that I have to add Ms. Scales' name to my list of some of the greats; Teale, Peterson, Bailey, Muir, Dillard, Darwin, Leopold and so many others. I feel I am not exaggerating the point here folks...this lady is good! In this work the author gives us a wonderful picture of the little, quiet and unobtrusive creature the seahorse. She begins with a very nicely done background sketch of the seahorse in art and literature and proceeds to point out its importance in various archeological discoveries, literally from around the world. This theme is woven into her work throughout the book. Of course she addresses the seahorses and their state in our present world; giving us fact after interesting fact (Did you know that he seahorse is the only known species on our plant where the male actually gives birth? Did you know they can change colors at will?), of the various seahorses found in virtually every ocean on our planet, with the exception of the arctic areas. She goes on to explain how these little creatures are used by millions (I might add, extremely delusional and ill informed millions) of individuals to cure a plethora of ailments, impotency seemingly being the primary problem it would seem. Of course the author does a wonderful job of letting us know the plight of these creatures; how they are being legally and most importantly, illegally hunted and gathered from most of the waters reachable my man. Many subspecies are now on the endangered list and some, if not already, are on the verge of extinction. There seem to be big money in dead seahorses and between greedy hunters, environmentally damaging trawlers and pollution, the outlook is rather grim. The author does give us a bit of hope here and there as she explains some of the many programs not functioning to try to save these little harmless critters that have been so important symbolically in our culture. Please do not get the impression that this book is a mere study of the taxonomy. No, no, no...far from it; the book actually reads like something between a

Hard to Believe It's Not a Myth

Probably you have never seen a seahorse in the wild. Even Dr. Helen Scales, who is a scuba diver and marine biologist, has only seen them a few times. The first one she saw, after many dives of looking, was "like glimpsing a unicorn trotting through my garden." But everyone knows what a seahorse looks like, a fantastic looking creature that sparks curiosity, and it is a hit at aquariums or in oceanic picture books. Scales has satisfied many facets of the curiosity about seahorses in her book _Poseidon's Steed: The Story of Seahorses, from Myth to Reality_ (Gotham Books). The reason seahorses don't get seen very often (and part of the reason for their attractiveness) is that they are placid; they do not zip away from predators, but quietly anchor themselves to grass or coral. There are, sadly, only a few black and white pictures in Scales's book, but she includes vivid explanations about the biology and legends of these strange creatures, as well as a broader look at our use of ocean resources. Seahorses were so puzzling that it took a while for them to be classified as fish. Even in the nineteenth century there was confusion and thoughts that they might be insects or shrimp. But like all fish, they have gills, and they have a swim bladder that controls their buoyancy. Seahorse males are the only male animals that get pregnant and go into labor. During courtship, the female extrudes a short tube that goes into the belly of her mate, and through it she shoots an egg-laden serum. It would make sense that the sperm of the male would be injected into the pouch holding the eggs, but evolution didn't make things so simple. The male still has sperm ejected into the water, as spawning fishes do, and the sperm have to be sucked into the embryo pouch. You are much more likely to see a seahorse in an aquarium than in the wild, and Scales gives a quick history of aquariums, which sprang up in the time of the Victorian enthusiasm for natural history. The world's first public aquarium opened in London in 1853 and was extremely popular. When four seahorses, brought from Portugal, were installed six years later, they were a sensation. Seahorses became popular sights in all the public aquariums in the world, and people clamored to have them in their own home aquariums until they realized how much work a marine aquarium is and the fad died down. These days, there are seahorse farms to breed seahorses for such home or civic aquariums. The farms were originally an idea to cash in on the seahorse trade, not for aquarium displays but for medicinal use. Traditional Chinese medicine uses powdered seahorse in panaceas for virility, ulcers, and who knows what else. Seahorses are often dredged up as byproducts of commercial trawling for shrimp, and 25 million of them a year go into pills. It proved impossible for seahorse farms to keep up with the trawlers, whose catch can turn into dried seahorses sold by the ton. Taking seahorses in this way isn't th