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Elephant Seal Facts
What are some fun facts about elephant seals?
Fast Facts: Elephant Seals
- Male elephant seals can hold their breath for longer than almost any other mammal, diving beneath the waves for up to two hours without surfacing for air.
- Elephant seals live for just two months of the year on land.
Why are elephant seals noses so big?
Elephant seals aren’t named for their size. Rather, the males develop noses that kind of look like elephants’ trunks. They inflate their noses in order to scare other males away to mate, they have to fight for dominance.
How long can elephant seal live?
There is a notable difference in lifespan between males and females. Females generally live for about 19 years, while males only live for about 13 years. Females come ashore and within a few days give birth to a pup conceived in the previous breeding season.
How fast are elephant seals?
How fast can southern elephant seals travel? Southern elephant seals can move along the ground at about 5 kph (3 mph) while on land. While swimming, southern elephant seals move at speeds around 5 – 10 kph (3 – 6 mph).
What are 10 facts about elephants?
Top 10 facts about elephants
- They’re the world’s largest land animal. …
- You can tell the two species apart by their ears. …
- Their trunks have mad skills. …
- Their tusks are actually teeth. …
- They’ve got thick skin. …
- Elephants are constantly eating. …
- They communicate through vibrations. …
- Calves can stand within 20 minutes of birth.
What are two reasons why elephant seals come on land?
Elephant seals come on land to breed and give birth, and to molt.
Do elephant seals fight to the death?
Do big males fight to the death? Rarely. During the breeding season, bulls battle each other for the right to breed with the females. These confrontations are often bloody, but rarely result in serious injury to either bull.
How did elephant seals evolve?
They evolved from land animals, either otters or bears. Look at an elephant seal skull in the FES office, or ask to see a picture carried by the docents on the bluff. Very bearlike. Pinnipeds appeared in the oceans about 25 million years ago.
What is the biggest elephant seal ever recorded?
These seals are famous for being big. They are the biggest of pinnipeds bigger even than walruses there being a record of a giant male Southern elephant seal that was between 6.5 and 6.8 m long and weighed over 4000 kg (Carwardine 1995).
Do elephant seals mate for life?
Sneaker males hang out along the periphery of the rookery and try to mate when the harem master is asleep or busy. It is believed that only about one percent of all male elephant seals actually get to mate during their life. Males have a very hard life and live a considerably shorter time than the females.
Are elephant seals bigger than walruses?
Elephant seals are bigger than even the largest male walrus. A male Pacific walrus weighs around 1,700 pounds while a male Atlantic walrus weighs around 2,000 pounds. While male elephant seals are often at least double that.
How fast are elephant seals in water?
In the sea, they can swim at a speed of 5 to 10 km/hr. Elephant seals dive to great depths. Males spend more time underwater than females. An adult may spend two hours underwater and dive to 7,834 feet.
Are elephant seals bigger than elephants?
Southern elephant seals breed on land but spend their winters in the frigid Antarctic waters near the Antarctic pack ice. Southern elephants are the largest of all seals. Males can be over 20 feet long and weigh up to 8,800 pounds. But these massive pinnipeds aren’t called elephant seals because of their size.
How big can elephant seals get?
Adult males may grow to over 13 feet in length and weigh up to 4,500 pounds. The females are much smaller at 10 feet in length and 1,300 pounds. The northern elephant seal is the second largest seal in the world after the southern elephant seal.
What is the elephant seals behavior?
Elephant Seal Mating Behavior
The majority of males end up as lonely bachelor seals, wandering the seas by themselves and never having sex. Scientists call the dominant males beachmasters. Their harems can range in size from 20 females to more than 300, with the largest have over 1,000 members.
What are 25 facts about elephants?
An elephant in the wild can eat anywhere from 100 1000 pounds of vegetation in a 16 hour period. The intestines of an elephant may be 19 meters in length, or more than 60 feet long. Elephants purr like cats do, as a means of communication. In a day, an elephant can drink 50 gallons (200 liters) of water.
Why are elephant seals important?
As top ocean predators, and prey for even larger predators like orca whales and great white sharks, they are a key component of the marine ecosystem. They spend most of their lives in the deep ocean waters of the North Pacific, journeying thousands of miles each year and diving to great depths in search of food.
How does elephant seal obtain its food?
Answer: The main sources of food are fish and squid. Prey is captured both near the surface and very deep underwater. The seals have been known to eat bottom dwelling fish from the ocean’s darkest depths.
Why are elephant seals in danger of becoming extinct today?
Much of their bulk is made up of blubber, the insulating layer of fat that keeps them warm during deep dives in frigid water. And it is this blubber that nearly sent the species into extinction. In the early 1800s as whales became more scarce, hunters seeking sources of oil turned toward elephant seals.
Do elephant seals have nipples?
Once the pup finds one of the two nipples it will nurse on milk that increases from 12% to 60% fat. In the usual one month of nursing, the pup will grow from 70 pounds to 300 pounds (30 kg to 135 kg). … In the last week of nursing she comes into estrus.
Are elephant seals related to elephants?
Elephant seals are large, oceangoing earless seals in the genus Mirounga. The two species, the northern elephant seal (M. angustirostris) and the southern elephant seal (M.
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Elephant seal.
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Elephant seal.
| Elephant seals | |
|---|---|
| Family: | Phocidae |
| Tribe: | Miroungini Muizon, 1981 |
| Genus: | Mirounga Gray, 1827 |
| Type species | |
What adaptations do elephant seals have?
Elephant seals’ blubber accounts for much of their weight and is an adaptation to help them stay warm. The bigger an animal is, the less surface area (or skin exposed to the air) it has in relation to its volume, so it loses less heat.
When was the elephant seal discovered?
Elephant Seal History. Thought to be extinct in the northern hemisphere by the end of the 1800s, due to heavy predation by sealers for hundreds of years, a small group of northern elephant seals was discovered on Guadalupe Island (off Mexico) in the 1880s.
How long have elephant seals been around?
The first elephant seals on Ao Nuevo Island were sighted in 1955, and the first pup was born there in 1961. In 1978, 872 were born there. Males began to haul out on the mainland in 1965.
How do elephant seals keep warm?
Elephant seals are mammals, meaning that they are warm-blooded, breathe air using lungs, have fur to stay warm, give birth to live young, and nurse their young using milk. Elephant seals also have thick blubber to keep them warm during cold-water migrations.
What do elephant seals weigh?
Do elephant seals poop?
In the extremely cold, seemingly barren Antarctic continent, poop powers life. Literally. Where colonies of penguins and elephant seals aggregate, their droppings, rich in nitrogen, enrich the soil and support thriving communities of mosses, lichens and invertebrates, a new study has found.
Which is bigger seal or sea lion?
Sea lions are also generally much larger than seals, with bigger bodies that can stand up and walk on land. On the other hand, seals have typically smaller and chubbier looking bodies that are more aquadynamic than sea lions’.
Where do elephant seals sleep?
Scientists have therefore wondered how these animals can sleep during their migrations from the Californian breeding colonies to feeding areas around Alaska and the mid-Pacific. Now a new study suggests they may sleep underwater as they slowly sink.
What time of day are elephant seals most active?
North Beach, Piedras Blancas Rookery
They are especially active during the early morning and early evening hours. Watch them in the water, in swim school,as they begin to move into their ocean home. Northern elephant seal weanlings learn to swim in the near-shore shallow water and tidepools around the rookery.
What is the largest seal in the world?
The southern elephant seal is the largest seal alive on earth today. It can get almost three feet longer than the northern elephant seal and can weigh over 3000 pounds more. Like its sister species, the southern elephant seal’s is identifiable by the large and drooping nose present on the males.
Facts: The Northern Elephant Seal
Just How BIG are Elephant Seals? | Super Giant Animals …
Cool facts about Elephant Seals (filmed near San Simeon …
