Cheeto the seahorse has a great name and an even greater story.
A girl and her mother were enjoying a day at Indian Shores Beach in Florida when they saw a seagull fly overhead with what looked like a Cheeto in its mouth. The bird dropped it, when the girl went over to investigate, she found that the it was not a Cheeto, but an orange seahorse.
The rescuers called Clearwater Marine Aquarium, which rehabilitates and releases marine life. She was dubbed Cheeto and cared for at the aquarium and then successfully released back into the ocean.
Cheeto is a very lucky seahorse. The aquarium suspects she was living among orange and yellow sponges until ocean currents took her near the beach, where the seagull plucked her out of the water. Seagulls usually reject seahorses because of their bony structure and spit them out, but that doesn’t always happen over the water. Fortunately for Cheeto, she was rescued from the sand.
Cheeto is a female lined seahorse (Hippocampus erectus), and has the ability to change color to camouflage with her surroundings. Although she was orange when she was first found, she turned yellow when she moved into her tank in the aquarium. Watch more in the charming video above.
