2024年4月11日 · Gray seals are gregarious animals—they gather in large groups on shore to breed, give birth, and molt. Female gray seals live up to 35 years and males about 25 years. Gray seals primarily hunt squid, fish, and sandeels; their …

2013年11月26日 · There was once a bounty on gray seals in New England; hunters in Massachusetts and Maine got $5 if they turned in a nose or skin. From the 1890s until the 1960s, an estimated 135,000 seals were killed, and seals disappeared from Cape Cod. Then the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 outlawed seal killing.

2024年10月29日 · Weddell seals in Erebus Bay, Antarctica, may look like couch potatoes when they are resting on ice. However, these seals, which are the southernmost population of the southernmost living mammals, are exceptional divers that can reach depths of more than 900 meters and recorded dives lasting 96 minutes, which is well beyond their aerobic threshold.

2016年1月27日 · Hungry seals will keep their whiskers ready to search out the tiny clues that lead to food. And I’ll keep flipping over rocks to find other useful lessons from nature, waiting to be uncovered. This prototype flow sensor, designed by Heather Beem, incorporates seal …

2024年4月11日 · The seals’ whiskers act as a sort of dietary timeline, incorporating molecular signatures from various food sources as they grow. Using a technique called stable isotope analysis, the researchers can identify different signatures in a seal’s whiskers and match them to potential prey items.

2012年12月18日 · The precise number of gray seals in the area is not known; however, over the last 30 years, in areas where there were once a few hundred, there are now several thousand. There are three sites or “haul-outs” on the lower Cape where large numbers of gray seals leave the water to avoid predators, regulate their body temperature, and socialize.

Bearded and ringed seals spend their entire lives in the Arctic. Hooded and harp seals spend summers in the Arctic, and harbor seals only occasionally venture north into the Arctic. The bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus) is the largest arctic seal, and bears the closest similarity to walrus. They are bottom feeders and have prominent whiskers.

Seals have much greater iron loads than terrestrial mammals because the seals need those proteins to carry oxygen in their bodies, says Michelle Shero, lead author of the paper. “That basically acts as a sort of internal scuba tank for those animals that allows them to dive for so long,” says Shero, assistant scientist at Woods Hole ...

Shero and her colleagues are investigating how iron in the mother seals’ diets impacts the pup’s diving capacity– and survival rates. An estimated 90% of Sable Island seal pups die during their first year, most likely because of the increased competition for food. “Iron is how seals carry lots of oxygen in their bodies for long dives.

2008年8月21日 · Grey seals congregate and relax on Billingsgate Shoal, Cape Cod. Fecal samples from live seals and birds revealed that even apparently healthy marine animals such as these seals can harbor pathogens, including antibiotic-resistant microbes and Giardia , an intestinal parasite that can cause fever, vomiting, and diarrhea that is well known to ...