Hi-yo, Seabiscuit. Away!
Due to the animal's appearance and name, sometimes seahorses are portrayed as the underwater equivalent of horses, and can be ridden by characters or used as chariot pullers.
This is particularly humorous, since Real Life seahorses are very, very small, the largest not exceeding 8 inches in length, and as slow as a fish can get without being totally immobile. Unlike most fish which move by using their pectoral fins to go slowly or their entire bodies to move quickly, seahorses swim by pushing themselves forward using only their dorsal fins. Since they spend most of their lives among coral or seaweed sucking up tiny crustaceans, they really don't need to be fast or agile.
Sub-Trope of Artistic License – Marine Biology, Horse of a Different Color and Pun-Based Creature. Compare and contrast Our Hippocamps Are Different. See also Seahorses Are Dragons for another creature that seahorses are often compared to.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Art
- In The Apotheosis of Washington, Neptune rides two horses while navigating the seas that are just like normal horses, but with fins in the place of their hooves.
Comic Books
- Aquaman sometimes rides a giant seahorse, named Storm (in the Silver Age, anyway). Storm returned a couple of times in the modern age, with writers and artists doing their best to make a giant seahorse Darker and Edgier. In Blackest Night, Black Lantern Aquaman rides a zombified Storm.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: A story where Donald Duck, Scrooge, and Gyro discover an underwater kingdom near one of Scrooge's drilling sites. The seapeople have seahorse racing.
- In Supergirl story The Death of Luthor, Kara and her Atlanteans friends Jerro and Lori ride three giant seahorses as searching the sea bottom for a rare isotope called "element z".
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: A few of the merfolk from Ronno's undersea village off the coast of Paradise Island ride giant seahorses sidesaddle.
Films - Animation
- There is a seahorse race in DreamWorks Animation's Shark Tale; Oscar lost all his money trying to bet on the races.
- In Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket rides what appears to be a sea donkey.
- In Help! I'm a Fish, Sasha the seahorse helps carry the main characters around. In the end, she is turned into an actual, land-bound pony.
- The Little Mermaid (1989): King Triton has his chariot pulled by them.
Films - Live-Action
- Giant seahorses are the steeds of choice for Xebelians (Mera's people) in Aquaman. Atlanteans prefer sharks. Arthur/Aquaman, of course, gets to ride a seahorse in the finale.
Literature
- In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in the far Eastern Sea Lucy sees a race of merpeople who ride seahorses
- In the children's book series Mermaid Tales, one of the main characters owns a couple of seahorses for riding.
Myths & Religion
- Classical Mythology: Poseidon was often shown with his chariot pulled by horses or seahorses. However, these were originally different from regular seahorses, with the head of a horse, fins for hooves, and a dolphin tail. Note that Poseidon was the originator of horses (depending on the version, either from when he raped his sister Demeter or when his seed hit some rocks).
Tabletop Games
- In Dungeons & Dragons, aquatic elves and locathah sometimes capture and train Giant Sea Horses and use them as steeds.
- More than a few merfolk cards in Magic: The Gathering have seahorses. These range from actual, if huge, seahorses
to a full-on hippocampus.
Video Games
- In King's Quest II, Graham does this. They even have saddles. Do the mermaids ride them sidesaddle or something?
- Naija can ride seahorses in Aquaria for a boost in speed. There is a mini-game and a corresponding achievement for running a race on a seahorse.
- The city-building game Atlantis Underwater Tycoon has a building, the "Atlantean Castle", that spawns merman knights that ride seahorses to protect your city.
- The Pokémon Horsea and Skrelp (and their other evolutionary relatives), despite being very small, can be taught the move Surf via TM, which lets them ferry their Trainer around. You don't actually get to see yourself riding them, due to the game using a generic sprite depiction for all surfing Pokemon.
- Their fully evolved forms are around six feet long/tall and make more plausible steeds.
- In World of Warcraft:
- An early quest in the Vashj'ir underwater zone of the Cataclysm expansion allows the character to obtain such a mount, which is the fastest way to move there (and it is only usable there).
- Also since Cataclysm, a seahorse mount that can be used in all of the other water zones of the game is obtainable, although it's a very, very rare drop.
- In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Sora can ride the Tatsu Steed and Tatsu Blaze Dream Eaters if he performs a Link Attack with them. Notable in that they're the flying sort of seahorse, and they also move extremely slowly like actual sea horses. The purpose of the move is to use them as a turret of sorts rather then transportation, though.
- Kingdom of Loathing's "Under the Sea" quest was updated to include this. After rescuing the Sea Monkees, you can ask about the currents and you end up on a quest to tame a sea horse, granting you access past the currents and into the Merfolk's city as well as increase combat initiative. Hilariously enough, the sea horse side-quest is also one massive reference to My Little Pony as the seahorse's random name generator produces a pony-like name and it's implied to be as colorful as they are.
Webcomics
- Homestuck: Eridan's lusus is a giant flying seahorse that serves as his steed while he hunts other trolls' lusii, as seen here.
Web Original
- In the credits of Yahtzee Croshaw's Zero Punctuation "review" of Duke Nukem Forever, he's riding a seahorse. (With Jimi Hendrix?)
Western Animation
- An episode of DuckTales (1987) where Scrooge, Gyro, Launchpad, and Doofus visit Atlantis has all of the Atlanteans use seahorses as mounts.
- In an SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob befriends a seahorse he calls Mystery. Seahorses are also regularly depicted for horseback riding scenes or as chariot-pullers, such as the seahorses that pull King Neptune's chariot in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie.
- Naturally, The Little Mermaid (1992) has Ariel tame an uncontrollable, purple seahorse named Stormy. Other episodes had merpeople riding seahorses, as well. Averted with Herald the seahorse, however.
- Star Wars: Clone Wars featured Mon Calamari riding giant seahorse-alikes and other aquatic creatures.
- No actual riding was involved, but it nevertheless bears mentioning that the original My Little Pony cartoon got in on the act as well with the Seaponies, their debut involving an infamously trippy musical number.
- In the Atlantis episode of Phineas and Ferb, Isabella mentions that she could get an underwater equestrian badge if they find a seahorse. When they come across some, Baljeet brings that up, only for her to say that she was only joking and point out that they are far too small to ride. After that, Buford rounds several up together and proceeds to ride them.
