(lighthearted music)

[Narrator] This right here is what happens

when a horse grows fins and moves into the ocean

and eats a crap ton of mescaline.

You're looking at the leafy seadragon,

a relative of the seahorse.

While it may not look like it,

this is indeed a kind of fish.

The lovely critter lives in the cooler waters

of southern Australia.

And though it looks dainty,

the seadragon can actually grow to a foot long.

As you might have guessed,

the leafy seadragon makes it's home in seaweed

and it's spectacularly camouflaged for it.

Here we see it dining on tiny crustaceans.

And see those fluttering bits there?

Those are it's transparent fins

which propel it around the seaweed.

Like a real dragon,

the rest of the body is made up of armor plates.

So the leafy seadragon is about as flexible

as a 100 year old human in a straight jacket

wrapped in duct tape.

And seadragons don't stop at being leafy.

This is weedy seadragon.

It shares a habitat with the leafy

but it takes a more restrained approach to it's camo.

Still, the leafy and weedy seadragons

are the most stunning fishes in the sea

and I'm not even on mescaline.

I don't think.