One day, a little girl was walking along the Indian Shores Beach by Tampa in Florida and she saw something small and orange that caught her eye. She thought it was just a Cheeto at the beginning, but when she picked it up she realized it was an animal. She realized the poor thing wasn’t feeling well, so she filled her sand bucket with water, placed him there and ran to her mom to ask for help. The animal really looks like a Cheeto but in reality it was a seahorse. These ocean animals change color depending on the environment they’re in.
The mum and her daughter took the seahorse to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, where experts told them that the animal’s color was due to her living among red and orange sponges before arriving to the beach. “The chances of surviving being dropped by a seagull in the sand are small,” said Don Stansell, a marine biologist at the aquarium. “It’s amazing because all of the things happened at the exact right time and probably only in a two-minute window for her to have survived.” At the aquarium, the seahorse now called Cheeto changed her color to yellow to match her surroundings. The animal finally began eating after a week. Cheeto is the star of a live-streaming on his recovery.