Seahorses, Pipefish & Leafy Sea Dragons

[Cmitchell]

Seahorses, Pipefish & Leafy Sea Dragons belong to a family of fish called Syngnathidae, which belongs to a group (Phylum) called Chordata. So do seahorses have an exoskeleton or endoskeleton?

Cheers

[King Normie]

but Goldfish DO have a Spine . . . and NO Exoskeleton!
I cain't claim to know about Seahorses from personal experience but I was taught that they be Real Fish, spine and all . . . and, like a Lot of fishes, have no scales.

[wildwood]

Seahorses are one of those animals that seem to defy the taxonomy system.
They have an exoskeleton (bony plates) which is usually found on invertebrates but do have a vertebral column which puts them in the chordata phylum.

[dundurn]

Seahoeses are fish and therefore vertebrates. There is no problem with their classification. They do not have a complete exoskeleton and even if they did this would no more make them invertebrates than it does armadillos, pangolins, tortoises, turtles or crocodilians. They have fins and gills just like "regular" fish. They have no ability to breathe through their skin nor any land-living phase which could get them confused with amphibians. Arthropods (insects, arachnids, millipedes and crustaceans) have exoskeletons but they have no internal spinal cord or vertebral column plus they have jointed legs (from which the phylum gets its name). Highly unusual and heavily adapted they may be but seahorses are just pipefish that learned to swim upright.