they make a seahorse in the sand

Paddington travels to Peru to visit his beloved Aunt Lucy, who now resides at the Home for Retired Bears. With the Brown Family in tow, a thrilling adventure ensues when a mystery plunges them into an unexpected journey through the Amazon rainforest and up to the mountain peaks of Peru.

Paddington, now happily settled with the Browns, picks up a series of odd jobs to buy the perfect present for his Aunt Lucy, but it is stolen.

To many of us they are a figure of fancy on par with the unicorn. To scientists, however, the seahorse is a fascinating object of study. Unlike other animals, in seahorses it is the male who get pregnant and gives birth. But to populations around the world, the seahorse is something else again; considered a source of sexual prowess to proponents of traditional Chinese medicine, the magical seahorse is also a crucial source of income to fishermen in the Philippines who harvest and sell them to that burgeoning trade.

Examines the sea horse, the only fish that swims upright. We watch it use its prehensile tail to wrap around plants and other sea horses. A frontal bulge houses organs including an air ballast. Three fins propel this fish. We see a female place her eggs in a male's pouch where they are fertilized and nurtured until birth in violent contractions. Inside the pouch are nurturing blood vessels. We then follow the growth of an embryo, greatly magnified: we examine its heart beating and its dorsal fin moving. Young sea horses attach themselves to each other. The film ends with images of many sea horses moving on the ocean floor, superimposed on a horse race.

“Guess what we’re doing! We’re going to practice swimming.” Hanan accompanies her brother to classes in the public pool. The first swimming badge is called the Seahorse, their instructor explains, because it “stands” in the water and doesn’t drown. When Hanan’s family came to Europe in a rubber dinghy, she couldn’t swim. To forget this experience, she learned not to go under in the water – like a seahorse.