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This is But Why: a Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions from curious kids just like you, and we find answers. Our last episode was all about pinnipeds, four-flippered, carnivorous, ocean dwelling mammals who come up on land to rest and have their babies. We specifically talked about two of the three types of pinnipeds, seals and sea lions, but we did not talk
about the third. Do you remember what it is? Walruses! We promised we would do a bonus episode all about walruses, so we're back today with our pinniped expert, Adam Ratner, a marine biologist at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California. That's a research and rehabilitation center that takes in sick or abandoned or wounded seals and sea lions and helps them return to the wild. They do a lot of studying of
these pinnipeds too. Actually, Adam is speaking with us in front of a group of baby seals living at the center temporarily, so you might hear them in the background as this episode goes on. One of the reasons we didn't talk about walruses in the previous episode was because Adam and the other people who work at the center don't take care of any.
I would love to take care of a walrus, let me just start by saying that, but there are no walruses in California. So walruses only live up in the Arctic, in the
cold water. So you'll see them around Alaska and Norway and kind of the Arctic Circle. They're built for life up in the Arctic, as opposed to some of these other animals, like the sea lions or the elephant seals, which aren't so the same way that you see different animals just in different parts of the world, polar bears, penguins, they're built for that environment. And with walruses, they just love that cold up in the Arctic, and it's where they figured out how to make their home.
Hi, my name is Jacob. Why do walruses look so weird?
Can you describe a walrus for someone who's never seen one?
Oh, so big. So these animals are, like, 4000 pounds. So that's like most of an NFL football team like, put together to make this walrus. They actually have long flippers, kind of like the sea lions. So they've got these big front flippers. They can tuck their back flippers underneath them. They can walk around up on land if they need to, tons of blubber, all that really good fat. And then, of course, the
things that make walruses really special are those tusks. So they've got these two big tusks, kind of like elephants that stick down from the front of their face. They also have an adorable mustache, I would add.
I'm Itai and I'm five years old, and I live in Gorham, Maine. Why do walruses have long teeth?
So walruses live up on the ice flows. So they jump into the water, they swim around, and they look for things like clams and other food. And they can actually use those tusks to help kind of dig through the sand to find some of that clam food that might be hiding. But then you also think about what it takes to get back onto that ice flow, that iceberg if you will, think about if you're in a swimming pool, you get to the side of the swimming pool and you want to climb out.
We tend to use our arms. We kind of push off and we climb up. The walruses don't have those types of arms to help them, so what they can do instead is use those tusks, put that onto the ice, and use that to help kind of prop them up onto the ice and climb.
Do walruses have teeth other than those two visible tusks?
They do. It's very different than the teeth that other seals and sea lions have. So when we think about the teeth in our mouths, we have sharp teeth. Those are the canines, and we've got the flat teeth, the molars in the back. The molars are for chewing. And walruses have almost all molars because they eat clams. You don't really need super sharp teeth for the clams. You gotta chew the clams. So they've got a full mouth of molars to help them eat their food.
Hi, I'm Andy. I'm five from Boston, Massachusetts, and I want to know why walruses migrate. Why don't they just stay in the north?
So walruses do migrate, but they all stay in the north. So it's a little bit confusing. I always view migration as traveling between your home and your favorite restaurant. And some animals, your favorite restaurant is going to be really far away from your home. So like California sea lions, the boys, home is Southern California favorite restaurant could be Vancouver, up in Canada. For other animals, the restaurant might be closer, and that's the case with
walruses. So they're always going to stay in the Arctic Circle, but they might move from different beaches and ice flows to go find different food.
So given that they're not leaving the north, they're not leaving the Arctic Circle, but they are migrating. Katara is thinking about another place that has a lot of very cold water and very cold temperatures, but no walruses. My
My name is Katara. I'm six years old, and I live in St Petersburg, Florida. Why do walruses only live in the North Pole. Why don't they live in the South Pole?
You know, sometimes it just depends where you show up first and where you make your home. So we see some animals, even though the conditions are pretty similar between the Arctic and Antarctic. You think about polar bears. They only live up in the northern hemisphere, not in the southern hemisphere. Penguins only down in Antarctica, not in the North
Pole. And the walrus has fall into that group. They kind of came to the Arctic a long, long, long, long, long, long, long time ago and realized that that is their favorite place to be. And honestly, I think it would be a bit daunting to try and get to the South Pole from there, so they figured they might just stay up there for a little bit longer.
What else is cool about walruses that we should know, because most of us will never have an opportunity to see one in the wild.
Walruses are just very cool. The mustache is adorable. Highly recommend. The babies are really big, so when they're born, they're close to 100 pounds, and they're going to spend a really long time with mom. They can spend between one and two years with their mom, which is much longer than a lot of the seals and sea lions. And they love contact. So as babies, walruses loved being hugged by their mom. It's very, very cute.
And then the other thing, from my perspective, that makes them really cool is, because I'm really interested in animal behavior is walruses can make lots of really different sounds. They can make lots of different vocalizations, both in water and out of water. So compared to the elephant seals with just that cackle, walruses make a whole bunch of different very cool sounds.
Can you mimic one?
I was so afraid you were going to ask that question. They can make a bunch. They can make a, I've actually seen walruses whistle. I've seen walruses make a sound that sounds like a, like a gutter, like a, like a rain, like flushing of a toilet, almost. Yeah, they're all over the map.
So the answer is, No, you won't make the sound.
It would be really bad. It would be really bad. It wouldn't do them justice.
Since Adam is not a walrus impersonator, we found some recordings of walrus sounds to play for you instead.
[walrus sounds]
Wow, they do sound pretty unique. Walruses may not look like any other animals in the animal kingdom, but they're still relatives of the seals and sea lions we talked about in our last episode. I wanted to know how Adam got into working with pinnipeds like these and learning so much about these very cool animals. What did he want to be when he was a kid, for example?
I wanted to be this. So I always joke that a lot of people, when they're kids, they want to grow up to work with dolphins or whales or seals, and I just didn't outgrow that. My focus was on research though. I was a scientist, I wanted to better understand where these animals go. So what's their migration? How do they talk to each other? How do they learn? So I spent time out on boats, and I spent times in
labs looking at birds and fish and marine mammals. And before I came to the Marine Mammal Center, I kind of had this moment where I saw a lot of these seals and sea lions getting sick. I saw them being impacted by trash. I saw them being impacted by things like climate change, and I realized that I couldn't just stay on a boat or be in a windowless lab. I wanted to help give them a second chance, and that's what
the Marine Mammal Center does. We're able to help the animals that are sick, but we're also learning so much about them, and I've got all of these wonderful people, listeners on the podcast today, people that visit the Marine Mammal Center or go to our website that also want to help. So we've got this whole army of heroes for the environment that's going to create a healthy ocean for marine mammals and people alike.
Thank you to Adam Ratner, Director of conservation engagement at the Marine Mammal Center, and thanks to the center for letting us visit. You can check out their website, MarineMammalCenter.org, to learn more about their work and the animals they care for. The walrus sounds you heard earlier are courtesy of the Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Database, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the New Bedford
Whaling Museum. As always, if you have a question about anything, have an adult record, you asking it on a smartphone using an app like voice memos, then have your adult email your file to [email protected] Why is produced by Melody Bodette, Sarah Baik and me, Jane Lindholm at Vermont Public and distributed by PRX. Our video producer is Joey Palumbo, and our theme music is by Luke
Reynolds. If you like our show, please have your adults help you give us a thumbs up or a review on whatever podcast platform you use to listen to us. We'll be back next week with an all new episode. Until then, stay curious.