Seahorse life is long and complicated. Seahorse males and females have reversed "gender roles", where the males behave effeminate and the females act masculine. The males are often left "pregnant" (as they hold their offspring a female produces in a pouch) while it's the female who brings home the food.
A male Seahorse even possesses certain traits labeled as stereotypically feminine such as vanity over things like hair, makeup, and worries over physical appearance. They have less muscle mass, a slimmer build, and have higher agility than the females.
A female Seahorse possesses certain traits labeled as stereotypically masculine such as machismo, competitiveness, and worries over how many males she's mated with to boast about. A female would want nothing more than a harem of males all to herself.
As a result of the female's urge for promiscuity, a male Seahorse has to try very hard to keep a female all to himself and is sometimes made to share her with two or three other males in her harem. So the male Seahorse uses every skill he possesses to woo a female to remain monogamous, one of them being an elaborate, skillful dance. The most skilled, intelligent male Seahorses are able to keep a single female happy for the remainder of their lives.
Sometimes, out of frustration, male Seahorses will sometimes declare another male as his true mate and only allows a female in when it comes time to breed and both males in their pairing will become "pregnant" with the female's eggs. Male/male offspring are impossible as Kihtria refuses to aid in it for reasons she refuses to explain.
A female Seahorse can produce about 100 eggs! Fortunately, when they begin they are no bigger than a pea. But the male isn't obligated to care for but one or two eggs in his pouch. Because of thousands and thousands of years in their evolution, male Seahorses have the uncanny ability to select the most healthy, beautiful eggs and hatch them successfully. A male who cannot hatch an egg properly will often be shunned even by other males and is cast out of their society. Though, in such cases the other aquatic races have no qualms with taking in a member not of their own race.
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