eli5 why seahorse males are male.

Question

Why are male seahorses male if they do the role of bearing and birthing the children? What defines male and female in this sense? Considering female seahorses are the ones that deposit the unfertilised eggs and seahorses then fertilise and bear them? It seems almost like the seahorse female does the job of a human male in that regard, by depositing gametes, which are then fertilised in the human female that then bears the children and births them, so how did scientists decide that seahorses are female and the males birth the young?

In: 3

Answer 1

Female seahorses provide the eggs and male seahorses provide the sperm. That’s generally how we assign sex in animals.