---
title: Spotted Seahorse (Hippocampus kuda)
scientific_name: Hippocampus kuda
common_name: Spotted Seahorse
taxon: Seahorses
conservation_status: VU - Vulnerable
published: 2024-10-30T14:33:45.888Z
updated: 2026-08-24T08:27:08.893Z
tags: Spotted Seahorse, Hippocampus kuda, Seahorses, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/seahorses/spotted-seahorse
---

# Spotted Seahorse (*Hippocampus kuda*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Seahorses (*Hippocampus*)
- **Size:** up to 30 cm
- **Depth:** 0-68 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Seagrass, rubble and sheltered silty bottoms, often on a single holdfast
- **Reproduction:** Live-bearer, Gonochoric
- **CITES:** Appendix II
- **Conservation status:** VU - Vulnerable

## How to recognise it

- smooth body without spines, covered in low rounded bumps
- short thick snout and a small backward-leaning coronet
- color from black through yellow and cream, usually with fine dark spots
- length up to 30 cm

This is the seahorse people photograph in this sea, and for most of a century it was filed under a different name.

The Red Sea animals were called Hippocampus fuscus, the drab seahorse, until molecular work sank that name into this one. So the local fish belong here, on a card whose species reaches thirty centimeters somewhere else: here they are small, around fifteen, and the ones photographed on the Egyptian coast sit at about the size of a hand.

The way to know you are looking at this one and not at Jayakar's seahorse, which shares the same patches of sand and seagrass at the same size, is the outline. Run your eye along the ridges of the body. This fish has low rounded knobs and nothing sharp anywhere, and it is usually so overgrown with algae and hydroids that the outline goes soft. Jayakar's carries real spines, sharp and obvious, on every ring and over the eyes. The difference survives a bad photograph, which most of the other characters do not.

The rest is seahorse: a tail with no fin on it, wrapped around a holdfast; a head cocked back on a flexible neck and released to suck prey in, which is the fastest feeding movement any fish makes for its size; and a male that carries the eggs in a sealed pouch, feeds the embryos through its wall, and delivers them in a labor that can last hours.

Look on sheltered sand and rubble with weed on it, shallow, often near seagrass. A pair holds a small patch of bottom and greets each other every morning.

## Also known as

- **English:** spotted seahorse, Common Sea Horse, Dull Seahorse
- **Arabic:** حصان البحر الاصفر, حصان البحر الحزين, حصان البحر الشائع
- **Hebrew:** סוסון כהה, סוסון-ים חלק
- **French:** Hippocampe d'estuaire
- **Italian:** Cavalluccio d'estuario, Cavalluccio giallo, Cavalluccio maculato
- **German:** Gelbes Seepferdchen, Gewöhnliches Seepferdchen, Krönchen-Seepferdchen
- **Spanish:** Caballito de mar común
- **Portuguese:** Cavalo-marinho-de-Singapura
- **Czech:** koníček kuda
- **Japanese:** クロウミウマ, Kuroumiuma
- **Chinese:** 庫達海馬, 海馬, 管海馬
- **Russian:** Жёлтый морской конёк
- **CA:** Cavallet de mar comú
- **DA:** Plettet søhest
- **ET:** Kuda merihobuke
- **HU:** Sárga csikóhal
- **TH:** ม้าน้ำดำ, ม้าน้ำมงกุฏสั้น

## Scientific synonyms

- *Hippocamphus kuda* Bleeker, 1852
- *Hippocampus aterrimus* Jordan & Snyder, 1902
- *Hippocampus borboniensis* Duméril, 1870
- *Hippocampus brachyrhynchus* Duncker, 1914
- *Hippocampus chinensis* Basilewsky, 1855
- *Hippocampus fuscus* Rüppell, 1838
- *Hippocampus hilonis* Jordan & Evermann, 1903
- *Hippocampus horai* Duncker, 1926
- *Hippocampus kuda multiannularis* Raj, 1941
- *Hippocampus melanospilos* Bleeker, 1854
- *Hippocampus moluccensis* Bleeker, 1852
- *Hippocampus natalensis* von Bonde, 1923
- *Hippocampus novaehebudorum* Fowler, 1944
- *Hippocampus obscurus* Hemprich & Ehrenberg, 1856
- *Hippocampus polytaenia* Bleeker, 1854
- *Hippocampus raji* Whitley, 1955
- *Hippocampus rhynchomacer* Duméril, 1870
- *Hippocampus taeniops* Fowler, 1904
- *Hippocampus taeniopterus* Bleeker, 1852
- *Hippocampus tristis* Castelnau, 1872

## Range

Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Republic of Mauritius, South Africa

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/seahorses/spotted-seahorse)*
*Updated: August 24, 2026*