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The Hippocampus is a mythological creature and has typically been depicted as having the upper body of a horse with the lower body of a fish.

Considerations

  1. Gills or lungs? Would this creature come to the surface to take air, or would it breath under water using gills?
  2. Would the hippocampus have one set of legs, as traditional mythologies have us believe, or would it not?

As this is a 'combination' of both a sea-faring creature and a mammal, I imagine some complications might arise in designing it.

How do I make a hippocampus anatomically correct while staying as close to the original mythology as possible?

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    $\begingroup$ Obligatory anatomically correct Hippocampus (on the left): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus#/media/… $\endgroup$
    – Cort Ammon
    Jan 25, 2016 at 23:49
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    $\begingroup$ Thought you meant this $\endgroup$
    – JDługosz
    Jan 26, 2016 at 0:40
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    $\begingroup$ This is what a hippocampus would look like if it got fat. $\endgroup$
    – Xandar The Zenon
    Jan 26, 2016 at 1:13
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    $\begingroup$ While I do like you've accepted my answer, I do suggest letting this and future questions sit for a few days. It lets more people vote, ideally letting the best answer go to the top! $\endgroup$
    – PipperChip
    Jan 26, 2016 at 6:16

5 Answers 5

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Gills? Lungs?

Both works just fine, such as in the lungfish. As you may guess, the lungfish is so called because it has lungs. It can breath air just as well as breathing water. This gives the hippocampus the ability to breathe in water and out of water, which can be a huge advantage! This is a great benefit for many organisms; if your water dries up, that's okay because you won't suffocate. If the water is hostile, due to predators or some other situation, you can just drag yourself onto land and can stay there for a while.

One Set of Legs?

Most biologists actually think that legs evolved from fins, which were used to provide a little boost to shallow- water dwelling creatures. A hippocamp may use these legs because they provide a boost in shallow water, help it lug itself out of the water (like seals do), or maybe even allow it to manipulate some things underwater. I'm not really sure where they are supposed to live, or what they eat, so I can only speculate on the uses of them.

It seems that their bodies would really work for surface swimming, because the horse legs don't have the kind of range of motion that you see in seals or manatees. It really seems like they need to tuck those legs in somehow, or just use them to keep their heads above water and use their fish-ends for actual locomotion in water. In any case, the hippocamp seems like a more realistic fantasy creature.

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  • $\begingroup$ Only the Australian lungfish can breathe through its gills $\endgroup$
    – Ichthys King
    Apr 22, 2020 at 20:58
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It might simply be a marine mammal like a seal or might even be the manatee.

It would breathe air, but have extreme adaptations for swimming. The strong resemblence to a horse's head would have to do with the manner of its feeding.

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I don't think you would have to change it very much at all. An even seal-like coat rather than a scaled fish half. clubby fins rather than hooves.

I would say the horse head would mean it was a water adapted odd-toed ungulate so not closely related to the Cetaceans which are even-toed (whales are a sort of sea deer). The classical hippocampus anatomy reminds one of a mudskipper so by the rule of convergent evolution it would be a member of family Equidae adapted to swamps that occasionally dry out. It would be amphibious, in habit, but an air breather. Most comfortable in the water but able to make trips across wet ground. I think a dusty savanna would do it in.

Seafaring would probably be a push for habitat but it could be migratory.

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well, Maybe looking into Whale and Dolphin evolution would be helpful as they evolved from an Even-toes Ungulate (Horses are Odd-Toe Ungulate) so one of the transitional phases may be helpful.

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    $\begingroup$ And their most recent common land ancestor is the hippopotamus, meaning water horse. $\endgroup$
    – Anthony
    May 13, 2018 at 8:26
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The hippocampus could be a hippopotamus-like animal, in that it would have a highly dense body adapted for running on the sea-floor. The tail would also aid it in moving forwards in the water, and would be able to coil up into a ring for them to balance on land. If the hippocampus have wings, these could be explained as an extra way to balance and provide speed underwater

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