On tiktok there's currently some people who genuinely believe that male seahorses get "pregnant" and have repeatedly told me to kms, called me a bitch (three seperate times from three different ppl), and commented on my page to pick apart whatever they can find instead of engaging. They were also telling me to be "nice" after i confronted someone who was arguably being hella condenscending by telling me i was "confused" and that they could "help me understand". On top of that, someone DM'ed me saying i was "genuinely mentally ill" and needed to "seek help" over a SEAHORSE fact. You can't make this shit up. I was also told i was a "child" because i didn't want to put up with someone acting like i was one. Realistically if you get told by someone random that they could "help you understand" when are you NOT going to feel like you're being belittled? I said in response "one thing im not is a child" and someone pulled up and deadass quoted my comment mockingly, purposefully cutting it down to "im not is a child". Are people just stupid on purpose? Like that is literally a thing people say. Sorry i didn't add a comma for your wee little brain!! Let me break it down; 'One thing im not, is a child.' I don't know how to explain that this is rooted in heavy misogyny and extreme womb envy, but it is. Most of the arguments they made were half-baked, i even got told i needed to "respect lgbtq folks". Literally WHAT about seahorses has anything to do with human sexuality? So anyways, i kept hearing shit like "they have a placenta" & "they experience contractions", and it's just like, NO. They don't. The word 'placenta' was loosely thrown around. Definitionally a placenta is an organ that connects to the womb and baby via an umbilical cord in MAMMILIAN reproductive cycles. It is a clump of tissue and can even be eaten after being expelled out. Seahorses are purely bone muscle, they do not have "placentae", their brooding POUCHESS instead go through self revascularization, where they begin to form new blood vessels to give oxygen to the babies. There is no physical 'placenta', their brood pouch is giving the babies nutrients and oxygen. If male seahorses wanted to eat their 'placentae', they'd have to cut their stomachs off, and consume their own body. On these so called 'contractions'' as well; Because Sea horses are made of bone muscle, they consciously make the decision to push the babies out because said bone is similar to the bones in your fingers and arms. It is not involuntary muscle flexes like mammalian labor. If people actually had been to an aquarium and witnessed seahorse birth, they'd have seen the way they bend themselves forwards and backwards to push them out. All in all, male seahorses do not get 'pregnant', it would be illogical if seahorses were born 2 times, because the female has to deposit those eggs from her own body, which is therefore birth. Instead, male seahorses incubate the babies until they hatch, which is exactly what the Surinam toad does. The eggs are pressed into the back of Surinam toads, they're then incubated, and they come out of the back's of their mother's whilst they are live. So rationally, i compared seahorse's to birds, because the mother lay's the eggs externally, and then they're incubated, because sometimes the male birds sit on the eggs instead. But get this, this absolute moron saw this, and their first response was "Ok but theyre not birds" NO SHIITTTT oh my god. Are we as a society going backwards??? Am i the odd one out?? I also compared them to salmon, because most fish lay their eggs, and then the male releases sperma onto the eggs, which is exactly what the fuck a male seahorse does. Like, when the female deposits the eggs into the brood pouch, the male releases sperma onto them, and once again, i am told that "salmon are salmon, seahorse's are seahorse". LORD i cant do this today.
People don't comment shit to misinform people, or at least i really hope that they don't. If you actually want to correct someone though, don't start with "You must be confused". You sound high and mighty. Cite your fucking sources first and don't go off of google AI overview.
