Have you ever tried to keep a seahorse alive in an aquarium only to fail miserably? Well, to add insult to injury, these creatures seem to be much sturdier than previously believed, because how else can you explain the amazing survival of a British seahorse found three miles inland in Weymouth, Dorset?

“I was just popping out to buy a paper and I looked down and saw this funny object by the pathway, said Karen Warr, 46, who discovered the unusual visitor outside her house. I got a bit closer I saw it was a seahorse. They are very distinctive. I did wonder what on earth it was doing there but I could see it was still breathing so I dashed inside and the only thing I could think of to pick it up with was a fish slice. I put it in the bowl I use for my scales and filled it with tepid water. It was still breathing but wasn’t moving much, it must have been in shock.”

How long the seahorse had been lying on the ground gasping for air is unknown, but Warr put her cat out three hours earlier; a cat fond of eating creatures from the sea. “’It couldn’t have been there then otherwise he would have eaten it”, Warr explained.

After saving the seahorse from suffocation, dehydration and the possible return of the hungry cat, Warr made a call to the nearest Sealife Centre. “I called the Sea Life Centre because they are only down the road and somebody came out to see me.”

The resilient seahorse, an adult female who has been given the name Pegasus, is now recuperating from her adventures in a dark quarantine aquarium at the Sea Life Centre where she is gradually being acclimatized back to saline conditions.

“They can go into shock if they are not treated carefully”, says Display supervisor Claire Little. “She seems fine now but we will continue to monitor her while she is in quarantine for the next 28 days. She has been quite lucky. They are fairly hardy creatures but it was obviously just very good fortune that she was found straight away and we were called.”

Exactly how a seahorse ended up three mile inland remains a mystery, but Warr and Little both agree that it was most likely dropped by a seagull.