When seahorses find a mate, they wrap their tails around each other so the tide doesn’t drift them apart. They have that one mate for the rest of their lives. When the mate dies, they do too.
Because I’m the kind of weird person who knows things like this:
Not many seahorse species have been studied but, of the ones that have, some species observe pair-bonding and are monogamous for a breeding season, some mate with multiple partners, and others pair-bond but switch partners readily. None of them mate for life, and none of them die if their mate dies. Even the more monogamous species simply find a new mate.
And they don’t grip tails to keep from floating away from each other. It’s part of a complex courtship ritual which synchronizes their movements so the female can pass her eggs into the male’s brood pouch (which happens snout-to-snout like the photo shows). Once she does that, she leaves and the male fertilizes the eggs then attaches himself to a plant. The female visits him daily to briefly reenact the courtship ritual (minus mating). Personally, I think that makes the truth sweet/romantic enough that it doesn’t need anthropomorphizing..
Knowledge.
