Sometimes seahorses are portrayed as the
underwater equivalent of horses, and are able to be ridden by characters. This is particularly entertaining, since
Real Life seahorses are both very, very small, the largest not exceeding eight inches in length, and pretty much as slow as a fish can get without being totally immobile.
Examples:
Classical Mythology
Comic Books
- Aquaman sometimes rides a giant seahorse, named Storm (in the Silver Age, anyway).
- A Disney Comics story where Donald Duck, Scrooge, and Gyro discover an underwater kingdom near one of Scrooge's drilling sites. The seapeople had seahorse racing.
Film - Animation
Tabletop Games
- In Dungeons & Dragons, aquatic elves and locathah sometimes capture and train Giant Sea Horses and use them as steeds.
- The same for Slaanesh demonic steeds in Warhammer40000
Video Games
- In King's Quest II, Graham does this. They even have saddles. Do the mermaids ride them sidesaddle or something?
- Naija can do this in Aquaria.
- The city-building game Atlantis Tycoon has a building (The "Atlantean Castle") that spawns merman knights that ride seahorses to protect your city.
- The Pokémon Horsea, despite being only a little over a foot long, can be taught the move Surf via TM, which lets it ferry it's trainer around. Not quite straight since surf's out of battle effect creates a shark/whale thing for the trainer to ride on, you're not actually one your Horsea itself.
- An early quest in Vashj'ir allow the character to obtain such a mount.
Web Comics
Web Original
Western Animation
- SpongeBob SquarePants befriends a sea horse he calls Mystery.
- In Help Im A Fish, Sasha the seahorse helps carry the main characters around. In the end, she gets turned into an actual, land-bound pony.
- Naturally, The Little Mermaid: The Animated Series had Ariel tame an uncontrollable purple seahorse named Stormy. Other episodes had merpeople riding seahorses as well.
- Averted with Herald the seahorse, however.
