Delighted staff at Southend's Sea Life Adventure are celebrating after one of their Australian big bellied seahorses gave birth to 120 babies.
This means the Southend centre in Eastern Esplanade has increased its population of the species by more than 17 times. Beforehand they only had seven adults.
The seahorse boom has come as a complete surprise to the centre which had no idea one of the animals was pregnant.
With seahorses, the female lays the eggs into the male's pouch who then fertilises them and carries them for the duration of the pregnancy.
But because males also inflate their pouches to impress the opposite sex, you never know whether the males are pregnant or just flirting.
Curator David Knapp said: "This was the perfect Christmas present. We had no idea one of them was pregnant. We just came to feed them and suddenly found all these babies."
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