Why are there rarely hurricanes along the equator?

For tropical cyclones to get started, they need the Coriolis force to act on the wind flow in order to curve the wind flow and generate the initial circulation, which sometimes goes on to become a hurricane. The Coriolis force is zero at the equator and thus systems cannot get the initial rotation. Once you get about 7 degrees or so of latitude away from the equator the Coriolis force becomes sufficiently large enough to allow for the development of low pressure systems.