When the impotence drug Viagra was launched in 1998, few people could have foreseen the seismic impact its introduction would have on the underwater existence of a peculiar-looking and sexually ambiguous member of the Hippo-campus genus.
Seahorses have for 600 years been used in traditional Chinese medicine as a cure for impo-tence, served up in rice wine, mixed up raw with herbs or dished up in soup as a source of potency and virility.
Rather than diminish its appeal, the arrival of Viagra appears to have spurred a huge increase in demand for impotence remedies using seahorses as a cheaper alternative to the western wonder drug that was making headlines around the world.
Around 25 million seahorses a year are now being traded around the world -- 64 percent more than in the mid-1990s -- and environmentalists are increasingly concerned that the booming trade in seahorses is putting the creatures at risk.
Just this month, seahorses were added to a global watch-list of endangered species, obliging 161 countries and territories around the world to monitor the trade in seahorses and prohibit the trade in any specimen under 10cm in length.
There is an irony in the use of seahorses as a means of boosting virility. Modern research has established that, if anything, the male of the species is more in touch with its feminine side than anything else in the animal kingdom.
Seahorses are unique in being the only species where the male gets pregnant. The female injects eggs into the male, who has a pouch where the eggs are fertilized and carried for up to four weeks until they are ready to be born.
Seahorses can also lay claim to being the most romantic creature on the planet, performing a dainty daily underwater dance with partners and generally staying faithful for life. Experts have found this to be the case even if they are placed in a tank full of single, available seahorses of the opposite sex.
Increasing numbers of sea-horses are now finding themselves premature widows and widowers, however, as the demand for seahorses for use in traditional Chinese medicine continues to expand. By 2001, the last year for which comprehensive figures are available, global consumption had reached 70 metric tonnes, equivalent to 25 million seahorses compared to just 45 metric tonnes seven years earlier, and there is every sign that this trend is continuing.
Samuel Lee Kwok-hung is the Hong Kong-based representative of the Marine Medicinals Conservation Program, a joint initiative by TRAFFIC East Asia and the US-based research group Project Seahorse. He says rising demand for traditional medicine alternative to impotence drugs like Viagra had pushed up seahorse consumption. Most seahorses are imported through Hong Kong and Singapore.
"The majority of the demand is from China," he said, explaining that seahorses are used to treat asthma and other conditions as well as impotence and sexual dysfunction.
"With China becoming more and more open for foreign investment and for exporting products out of China ... the trade in traditional Chinese medicine is on the whole increasing," Lee said.
Project Seahorse is not calling for an end to the use of seahorses in traditional Chinese medicine. In developing countries it is often the only affordable form of treatment and its rise in popularity along with the Viagra phenomenon in the west is understandable.
What's more, the medicines they are used in appear to be effective and boast six centuries of satisfied customers.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion