Pinnipedology (SEALS & WALRUSES) with Luis A. Hückstädt

Oh hey, it's the first three alarms that you turned off in your sleep. It's alleyboard Ologies. We're doing it. Pinapdology for conceals seallions, walrus dongs. Let's talk first, though. Thank you to patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies for submitting questions. It costs just a buck a month to join that club. Come on over. Also, thank you to anyone who has hit subscribe, who's told a friend, texted, tweeted, left reviews. I read all your reviews like a gentle creep.

My name is Fly Huckstad and my prannouns are he, him and L. I guess since I Chilean.

Good to know. Oh, that's right, ol, because you're now where are you right now?

We're not Wilmington, North Carolina.

Which is not Chile.

I've lived in the state for the last sixteen years almost.

Oh you have, And what are you doing in Wilmington right now?

I'm visiting researchers. So I got a fellowship to come here for a semester, and I've been working here, giving a god student class and doing research with a couple of collaborators here.

Ag W What do I always say ask smart people, not smart questions. Are there seals in North Carolina?

No, there's I mean now, it looks like every now and then they get some random stranded seals that come up, come this, this far down from this from the Arctic, but they don't live here.

Okay, I wasn't sure. Actually this brings us to a great question. What is the seal? What is the seal? What is the pinnapad?

So a pinnipeg is a sub order.

So if you if you know something about how animals are put into categories, there's the class mammalia. So all my mamas basically are together, and we did the class. There's orders, right, sort of some categors within mammals, and one of the main ones is carnivores, and so pinipets are related to bears and dogs and cats and all that. But it's sort of like the aquatic branch of those guys, got.

It, Seals are carnivores.

Yeah, so seals are carnivores, so they're together with the cusses relative on man will be bears basically, but they are they come from that branch of animals basically, so they're related to cats and dogs and bears and otters and all those guys.

The otters, I'm totally like, yeah, of course, but the bears. That's really flipping my ship right now.

Yeah, so bears and pinipets share a common.

Ancestor, okay, and bears have cute tiny little ears. Seals and sealions and wall versus cute tiny little ears.

Also, no, yees, sea lions. Seallions actually include both seallions and fur seals, and those guys have ears external ears basically what we call the pinat so true seals, those guys don't have an external ear like our ear that we can see, but they do have of course everything internal I can hear you basically.

Ah, so don't talk smack about them exactly. Can you list off for me? What are pinnipeds?

Yeah, So there's three families within the pinnipets. The first one is the walrus, which is just a species.

I am the walrus.

The other one are the true seals, and the third family includes seallions and four seals.

Got it, and elephant seals are included in that.

Elephant seals are true seals are the biggest elephants is actually are the biggest of the seals.

So huge.

Yeah, they're massive, so giant.

Okay, So families of pinnipeds include the walrus. There's just one species of walrus, the walrus. Then there are some fake ass just getting they're not fake, they're just not true seals called otaridai. And these are seals with ears, and sea lions and fur seals. And then there are the true seals, which are earless sort of ear lobliss and there are thirty three species of pinnipeds total, all of which you want to stare lovingly at. And what's

Yeah, so they're they're pretty much everywhere. They tend to hang out more colder environments. So you have the highest diversity of seals in the Arctic and the Antarctic, but there's seals, well, pinipets basically in the equator. There's sea lions and roses that live in the Galapago silence, but most of them actually do leave instead of colder environments. Cald w so the west, because of North Americas were

A sea odor. It's called pujila, and.

That's the first sort of ancestor of a seal. And then along the custland of northern California, Oregon, that's where we see the first fossil of a real pelipad.

So the ancestors of modern seals and sea lions slipped off the terrain of Earth and back into the water off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. They think that makes me feel so like homesick and validated because I'm from the Bay Area where the waters. You go to the beach in the Bay Area and you go out there with a windbreaker and you're like, ah, it's nice, let's get back in the car. So the Pacific is so cold, and people obviously like don't think about that

It's partly related to the fact that colder waters are more productive biologically.

What does more productive biologically mean exactly?

So, because they're more productive, there's more food than these animals. They're big animals. They also have high metabolic rates because they're mammals, right, so they have to keep constant temperature, so they eat a lot of food. So in order to support their populations, they need a lot of food. And the environments where you have a lot of food in the ocean tend to be the coldor water. So upwelling areas like the California Current or colder waters in the Arctic or the Antarctic.

So he says that the Humboldt currents and South American currents bring Anarctic water to the coast of Chile and Peru, bringing a pretty sweet ecosystem for seals. How cold are the waters off of Chile And at what point did you set yourself on seals or wall versus or elephant seals or sea lions or for seals, elaborate seals and say, dang, those things are cool.

So let me think about this. First of all, Chili sort of.

The mirror image of California, So you imagine putting a mirror in the equator. Chilias is the exact same opposite of the California current system, so we have very similar water temperature, similar kind of environments, et cetera. So that sort of explains why there's so many peanupets and Chili as well. There's not that many species, but there's a lot of individuals. However, my story is a little bit more concluded than that, because I was actually born and

Come see on a new davision.

And the sea lion like playing with the ball, and I guess that as a kid, I saw that and I was sort of mesmerized by marie mammals, and I wanted to.

Get do that.

So by the time that I my parents decided to move back to Chile, I was sixteen years old. And one of the arguments that they used to convince me to move was that there's marine.

Mammos in Chile.

And they bought it, so I decided, yeah, that's even though I was a sixteen year old, I of course didn't want to move the new country. When I was a teenage yeer, they told me that, and yeah, automatically was like, yeah, I'd move to Chile.

Every since I was ten years.

Old or something like that, I knew that I wanted to work with married mammals, So yeah, that's basically how I ended up choosing his career.

That's amazing. Essentially, the pennapeds sealed the deal.

Wow, that's awful exactly, So.

Sorry, And what's it's your take now on a quaria that have marine mammals versus being a marine mammal biologist and a pnepedologist, why did you at what point in your studies did you decide I want to study wild animals rather than work with them in captivity.

Well, I think the most of us actually work with marine mammals. We want to work with them in the wild, right, That's that's the idea. But we also acknowledge that it's impossible to know a lot of things about these animals unless we have them in a control environment. So we have to do a lot of experiments with these animals. We have to come up with protocols to then apply

Louis says that in order to help wild populations, it's necessary for the mammal scientists who devote their lives to them to be able to study these critters in a controlled environment, to know what their blood volume is and their chemistry with certain diets, et cetera. But all of that depends on largely on the conditions that they're kept under.

So you have to be very conscientious about the ethics of the aquaria for example, that you're working with, making sure that there's enough space, et cetera. And there's also the fact that a lot of the time must have lived in captivity for generations. You kind of just bring them back into the wild and release it.

That's impossible.

Ideally in my mind, I wouldn't have a missing captivity, but I acknowledge that they have a huge potential.

Tell me a little bit about what your life as a pine of pedologist looks, like how often are you on expeditions versus being say in North Carolina, where you might be looking at data more or animals in captivity, Like how many parkas. Do you own? He does your work smell like fish? Like? Tell me about it?

So it depends on So I've been very lucky ever since I was a grass student and a PhD. I came to USIE Santa cris in California to do my PhD in the Coastal Lab with Dan Costa, which is sort of one of the biggest names in marimammal research in the world.

That's right, it's the Coastal Lab, not the Coastal Lab. It's Dan Costa, whose last name means coast and is one of the world's leading researchers in coastal animals. And I looked him up. In one photo online, Dan Costa is kind of kneeling on a field of ice, and he's wearing one of those big red parkas that people in the Antarctic wear, and his salt and pepper beard is just level with a seal sporting a six inch

He had this project and he didn't have any students working on that, so he offered to me and I was like, of course, I'll work with that. It was in Antarctica. It's not only I'm get to go to Antarctica. I get to go to Antarctica through Chiles. Is a free ticket home noise. But also I've been very lucky in the fact that I've been invited to work all over the place. So I've worked in California, so there's

He's worked in Mexico and California with California sea lions, which can measure up to nine feet long, weighing eight hundred pounds. And remember they're the ones with a little tidy ear sees. And he's worked in the Galapagos with the endangered Glacago sea lions fur seals. He's worked in Uruguay and Chile with South American sea lions. The dude has had adventures anywhere else notable.

Yeah, and I've been to Ontarctica about ten times, where working with Southern infant seals, grabator seals, Antarctic fur seals, upper seals.

And when you're doing the work, what are you doing. Are you hiding out in a tent and recording every move? Are you hugging them? Are you taking blood samples? What does that field work look like?

I love of that.

So it depends on where you are. So I never actually have the experience of the hardcore biologies that lives in a tent for weeks at a time. I've done that for like two weeks in that sale, I've got to more sort of spoiled camp sites and field sites.

So the worst condition and this quote unquote wars.

When I was working on my dissertation, I went to work with Southern elephan Seas and we have a camp. Well, Noah has a camp where we were saying, but they have absolutely everything there. You have the onlyft they don't have is specifically internet. But you have a satellite phone, you have a generator of electricity, you have a cabin, You have beds, so it's nothing bad. You have a shower even.

And when Louis says the Noah camp, he doesn't mean rustic bunkers with his friend Noah. Noah is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is a United States Scientific Agency within the Department of Commerce and their field lodgings more like summer camp housing from what I gather and life as a seal researcher ranges from that all the way up to the Murdo Research Station in Antarctica, which by comparison is pretty plush.

Well, you have three bars, you have ATMs, you have so, you have Wi Fi, you have a coffee shop. You're super spoiling there. So does have been sort of my experiences in the field.

Is there a type of fieldwork that you really love doing? How close to the pinnepeds do you get to be?

Yeah, so that's that's good thing.

Because I didn't finish I forgot about the take a part of yours question.

I work with animals.

Basically, I define myself as an ecologies but also do a little bit of physiology, so basically looking into how the animals feed within their ecosystem and how they operate. And in order for us to do that, I basically

So I use a lot of that.

Okay, this biologging equipment, remember the seal hat with the antenna. It's like that or tagging or collars, and it helps pinapedologists figure out where these animals are headed and how they eat, so they can make sure to protect their food sources and thus them and right on queue. By the way, Lewis's dog demonstrated a blinged out mammal by shaking her own color to measure, so yeah, kind of

They're stable basically sort of markers that tell me something about their diet and where they go, et cetera. So I can make sure that on their tissues, their blood, their fur, their whisker, et cetera. So I can collect those samples from the animals when they're under anesthesia. We can include the instruments on them and then let them go into their thing and then retrieve the information later.

So you get to straight up touch seals under permitted conditions.

And then a lot of permits.

Yeah, so many questions about getting to touch a seal, which ninety nine point nine percent of people will not get to do, but one hundred percent of people want to do.

Yeah.

Are they silky? Are they soft? Is it like petting a chocolate labrador or is it more like a cat? Or and are they muscly or are they like like what texture of seal?

Tell me everything? So it depends the species. Right, So have you ever pat a great day?

Yes?

So that's sort of what it feels like, Okay for a true seal. True seals don't have they're not very furry. They don't have the nice and undir fur like like the first seals, So they just have sort of the guard hair. So their hair is sort of more rigid. It's kind of coarse, so they're not very very very

It's not like yellow. It's actually sort of rigid.

So they're they're likely like compact little bolts of fat.

Actually, what's the differentference between blubber and fat.

Blobbery is more of a complicated fat that has an added structure to it, so it has some proteins in there.

It makes the fat a little bit more rigid.

Oh okay, if you're moving through the water, it's going to make sure that you are just as tight as possible because anything that you have that moves with you, that wiggles, you're basically add adding drag, and that's bad when you're moving through the water. For example, the shape of a dolphin is that perfect sort of torpedo like shape, right with very tight skin, and they also have a layer blogger, So that should be the ideal shape that

On a wetsuit.

Why is Louis comparing them to dolphin like dolphins or the cheerleader stepsister and pinnipeds are a girl in a teen rom com who is beautiful but just still wearing glasses. Well, cetaceans, he says, have just had more time evolving in the water now. Pinnipeds, despite being shaped like the world's most ambitious blunt and having feet that look like tube socks are falling off, they still kill it in the face area, and they're huge, beautiful blinking eyes with eyelashes. Is there

So humans somehow are tuned to find things that have big eyes as adorable, but that's notssarily the case. That's not the reason why their eyes are so big. So if you think about when these animals are eating, when they're finding prey, they're doing this in the depotion and there's virtually no light in the depotion. So you going to Maine magicians of finding food, especially if you're trying to go for this sort of by luminescent prey. You got to have big eyes so you can catch every

There's no light in there.

And then what happens when they're just basking on the beach. How come all of that blubber doesn't make them overheat or all of that light doesn't make them want to dive into a cave, which is what I want to do sometimes on the beach with sunglasses.

It does actually, So when you see them on land that they're basking, their body are cold after they were diving for a whole night or even longer than that. So there might be just warming up a little bit. But when it gets too hot, they have to get in the water again. So you go right now, for example, you go to the Channel Islands in California.

So the Channel Islands are off the coast of Santa Barbara and are home to a staggering array of pinnipedes, including California sea lions and harbor seals, northern elephant seals, northern fur seals, rare Guadalupe fur seals and even more rare stellar sea lions. What really just hiding off the coast of Oprah's house, truly living their best lives. Now a few hours north of that, near San Luis Obispo,

You'll see that they didn't around now and basically when it gets too warm, they have to get on in the water to sort of cold down, because blobbers are really good insulator and their temperature is going to go up no matter what.

How what about yearly cycles? Do they migrate like cetaceans or do they stay in one place all the time?

So depends on the species. Most animals. Most species are sort of residents. They don't move them much. Some of them just part of the polationis moves. For example, California's allions, the breeding colonies are in the Shadow Islands and Son in southern California. But when the bringing season ends, the males take off, and that's what you see males in San Francisco, in Oregon, in Washington State, in British Columbia. So those are saions that move all the way there

So sea lions the ladies stay put and the dude's jet. When this happens in the species human, my Montana relatives call this honky tonking. So sea lions bide UDEs. What about elephant seals.

So elephant seals from California and Mexico go all over the north see if you as far as the Gulf of Alaska, the Losian Islands. We have animals from central California that have crossed the International Dayline going west towards Japan basically and come back and when they're at sea, they're spent. So we're talking about thousands of kilometers away from the coast.

That's crazy. Where are they sleeping? Are they just like bombing in the ocean.

They're sleeping while they're diving. So it's actually been really cool. There's a gut student in Santacus that is looking at that exactly. Elephant seals are. Basically we just published a paper where we show that elephant seals are just little, well not little, they're big vacuums. They're constantly eating a small fish. They're diving there, they're eating the small fish, and once they reach a point, I guess when they're they're full, they have what we call a drift dive.

A drift dive like drifting off. So Louis worked on a recently published paper in the journal Science Advance and it was titled forced into an Ecological Corner Round the Clock Deep Foraging on Small Prey by Elephant Seals that talks about these aquatic naps and what.

They do is that they dive, They swim actively to about fifty to one hundred meters, and then they turn on their backs and they just fall like a leaf. So imagine the leaf of a tree falling off. And the reason one we know that is because we put instruments on the animals and we can describe the three dimensional movement of the animal. So they do that and withink that that's when they're they're resting, they're diving, there are sleeping, and they're also digesting.

What that is bonkers.

Yeah, So when they're at sea, elephant seals are just amazing. They're just diving constantly for about twenty minutes in average, coming back up to the surfers for just three minutes, and then keep diving and keep diving. So ninety percent of their time at sea they're dive.

What kind of lungs do they have?

The lungs are big, but the lungs are actually not very good at holding the oxygen. As a matter of fact, they exhale before they gonna dive. Most of their oxygens carry in their blood and their muscles.

Oh my gosh, so they don't get the bends because they empty their lung set exactly.

Have amazing adaptations to dive because they're diving to two kilometers. I don't know how much that's in miles, but a.

Mile or so, like around a mile.

Yeah, so and for up to two hours.

Oh my, gosh, that's like ten Is that ten thousand meters around? Yeah? I guess, Oh my god, for hours. Okay, this is weird question wise, But underneath their blubber, are they ripped? Like do they have abs underneath? They're like a foot of blubber.

They actually have very big muscles.

It's one of the reasons why, as I was saying, they hold a lot of their oxygen or most of their oxygen in their blood and in their muscles, So their muscles are very big, very well developed, because basically they're swimming. It will be like as running NonStop for eight months at a time, and he's sleeping for like five minutes every couple of days or something like that. It's just a ridiculous kind of lifestyle.

It's like someone who's shredded wearing baggy clothes exactly what. Okay, you mentioned males and I have some questions about dimorphism because walruses they have these giant tusks, right, and elephant seals have a dong on their face and they rip each other apart. What is going on with their sex lives? Why do they have face weapons?

It goes again, it depends on the species that.

Walruses have a little bit about what we call sexual dimorphism, but it's not that much. You're actually see females with tusks. They're just not as big. I guess in the case of sea lions and elephant seals, they're probably one of the best examples of sexual dimorphism. Males can be two, three or four times as big as females, so you have that, and that has a lot to do with

Okay, I double checked this, and yes, allion's roar can reach one hundred and fourteen decibels, about the level of a live concert. Back when there were live concerts, but an elephant seal can just honk in the face of that and can broadcast his horniness up to one hundred and thirty decibels, which is louder than a thunderclap, a chainsaw, and right about the noise of a military jet from

And one of the things that they used to sort of avoid conflict is they remember males, remember the calls from individuals. So if there's a fight at the very beginning of the season, all males arrived, so that before females arrive, don't hang out together and just start having fights with each other, and the winner off the fire, you're going to recognize who. You're going to be able to tell all that I thought the guy that didn't go away from me.

I'm not going to get into that fight again.

So they recognize each other based on their calls. And one of the things that probably this strum helps with them is just making their call louder.

Oh my god, So they're able to make these really loud calls so people know, don't mess with me. Kick your ass last season and then I stole your girl, so you might not want to get in a fight and bite my neck again.

Yeah, there's a series of really cool experiments that a friend of mine died where she went to different colonies of elephants along the because of California, and she recorded elephant seals from one colony and played those calls on a different colony. And you can see that the guys that didn't know this particular male that was very aggressive in one colony, they didn't react to him at all

Who that guy was.

Oh my god, and I hate to ask this, but I mean, they have what looks to be a dog on their face. Do they have like matching nethers? Like if if you have an elephanty with a giant proboscis, like is he packing or what?

I don't know, because their pinnis are internal, which is a good thing.

What they've got inner digs? How does that work?

So they again, when you are an animal of the swims in the water. You want to reduce the drag so you don't have any extra apendages or anything like that are hanging out. So guess like a dolphin, our cetacean elephant, seals and well seals and peinipies and general have evolved in a way that their penis is internal and they only when they're going to have sex they expose their pinions.

Oh my gosh, So you don't know what you're getting into until it's gotten into you.

Exactly.

Oh wow, But you're like, I guess I'm gonna go by this call, and he's really loud, So.

Exactly they do. They do all have vacuum.

So what in the ding dong heck is a baculum? Well, it's a dong bone. It's a bone in your dog. If you're a walrus, they do.

Yeah, so they have they have a most most mammals actually.

Have a bone in their princes.

So it's humans we're sort of deception. But I think Native Americans in Alaska use the vaculum of walruses and they carve it so they use it as a little piece of art.

I guess, little piece of art. I looked it up a walrus vaculum can measure two feet in length, and doing some deeper digging on this, I found an anthropological article that traced the origins of Usik art to pretty much the twentieth century, with Native Alaska artists doing the carvings not out of their own traditions but to meet the demands of tourists looking for a kind of lude

So they are part of that branch of carnivores that dogs and bears belong to. So I guess in that sense, they are kind of dogs of the sea. They're very trainable, as you can see animals in a career, They're very smart.

There are, however, wild.

Animals, so I will highly discourage anyone to get close to these animals. They actually move faster than you think, and they might not like you've been.

Close to them. So that's one thing that.

I guess is one of the most important messages that I like to convey. It's the fact that you see a seal at the beach stairway from the seal, don't

So if you see a pin of bead pup on the beach, do not cradle it, do not abscond with it. Seal moms will be like, dude, I left to get one fish and you took my baby. It's not enough to warm the whole planet and invent polka music. Humans have to go stealing babies too, So what do you do?

Oh yeah, so it don't do it? So you can call.

There's organizations like the Environmental Center, for example. You can call if you think that the animan is in distress. That don't get close to animals.

Lea Lodovico had a great question. I wanted to know have scientists analyzed a range of seal barks, and if so, can I tell which barks are associated with certain behaviors like defensive barking versus productive barking.

So a lot of people when they when they think of a seal barking, what they actually are visualizing is a California's lion barking, which are the ones that you see of the pier in San Francisco because of California and whatnot. So they do have different meetings, So smells usually do that as.

A warning sign.

But the world of about a coustic communication benefits is just fascinating and I will highly encourage everyone to go and look for Withdell seals calls because they sound like a space shift.

Really.

Yeah, they have the most amazing sound. And one of the most my most treasure experiences is just walking on the sea ass and you're just walking underwater basically on the frost and ocean, and underneath you you have Withdelle seels swimming around in the Charctica and you can hear them through the eyes and they have these sort of incredible sort of star Wars robot slash spaceships calls are amazing.

Excuse me, you need to hear these Wetel seals right now. So that video was uploaded by the YouTube account Wetell Seal Science and Apparently, researchers in Antarctica would sometimes fall asleep to these seals vocalizations, which sound beautiful to our ears and also can be super super high frequency captured by a broadband digital hydrophone device. Their calls can go up to two hundred killer heertz, so high that a bat would be like, what am I listening for? People?

Yeah?

Several times every time that a good Antarctica. That's sort of my experience. I'm not very good about showing like I'm not jumpy. I'm not gonna be screaming or yelling at anything like that, So I'm.

Sort of an integrat in that sense.

But it's one of the things that to me, there's one there is why I go back so much. It's just an incredible experience and just being so lucky. Every now and then, every five minutes or so, it hits you like, Wow, I'm so lucky I've been here in this environment working with these animals too, because working with that with the el seels is just one of the most incredible experiences.

Ever, would you say that what all seal is your favorite?

Yeah, they're They're just adorable there. They don't have any predators from land.

Right.

If you heard the recent Ersenology episode about bears, you may remember that the Antarctic pretty much means no bears here.

So there there you can approject with the all feel and they just look at you like what what are you? And they roll on their backs and suppose their bellies, which is where you're not supposed to do if if you're at risk, right, So work with them is just incredible, But they don't understand anything bad it's going to happen to them that comes from land or from the eyes.

Rob Harber's first time question ask are common in hot with a good one? Just literally just wrote in ever booped a snoot? Have you ever gotten a touch of seal nose and just gone yeah?

As a matter of fact, I have several times, and one of the reason is why I did this. Well, it is adorable.

But when we have sentiments on there and his tisia to work with them, we have to get them to dated right because these guys have big teeth. You want to make sure that everyone is safe and one of the things that is kind of tricky about anesthetizing seals is that they tend to hold their breath. It's a bad thing to hold your breath when you are under anesthesia. So one of the things that we do to make sure that they're breathing and they're okay, it's actually stimulating

Oh my god, you just you don't understand how many people just decided to become pinapedologists. I think on your resume one of the special skills is like I boop snoots. I have to. I keep them alive. I must boop their snoots. It's pretty good job.

The mission in my life.

Stephanie Approaches had a really great question, how do they deal with water pressure in their ears? Also? Are their whiskers useful?

So yeah, the whiskers are amazing useful. Going back to their ears, they usually sort of full of fluid. So by being full of fluid, you sort of avoid the changing pressure that we have, so that basically they lost the the chamber that is full of air that we have. Seals don't really have that anymore, so they can they can dive and they don't have that much air in their ears, so that's not a problem for them. And

And they use that to find prey. What Yeah, so about eighty percent of their food that they actually consume, they probably find it using their whiskers.

They can find clams buried in sand with just their whiskers. Imagine having a metal detector on your face or X ray glasses to detect buried candy bars. Such is the power of the whisker. Now how powerful are these whiskers? Another patron had a question Emily Stewart, first time question asker wanted to know I heard on octonauts. Is it true that harbor seals whiskers are so sensitive they can sense an individual fish from one hundred miles away. My

One hundred miles away is not accurate. But they can.

But it's basically what I was trying to say, that that experiment was done with captive animals, So again it goes back to say why we need animals in captivity.

But they did that.

Basically cover their eyes and they have a little mechanic fish in a pool, and the seal was able to follow the fish exactly, but it wasn't one hundred miles away.

It was just a couple of feet away.

Wasn't that one hundred miles away? Yeah, one hundred meters, yes. So see the twenty ten Journal of Experimental Biology paper entitled Hydrodynamic determination of the moving direction of an artificial fin by a harbor seal or the appetizing twenty seventeen follow up research study entitled Seal whiskers may sense fish breath. PJ had a great question, they said, I'm obsessed with seal locomotion. How did their ridiculous movement evolve and why

So when we're talking about locomotion of seals, the first thing that comes to mind, of course, is how they move in the water. And you have two different kinds of locomotion in there. You have the sea lions and first seals. So they are right.

That's what we call them otar it means ears. So the eared ones, how do they move?

And they use the four flippers, So imagine like penguin basically the same thing. That's that's how sea lions and forces sort of swim.

And then you have the true seals and they use their hind flippers like a fish. Basically they go side to side.

So those are the two different motions that they have when they're in the water, and you can sort of see how true seals are sort of better adapted to the water than sea lions are when it comes to land. Of course, they have to go through so many adaptations to being able to be successful at sea that they've lost their grace when they want.

So they have to move in a clum sea way.

True seals have lost the ability to have lost the joint that basically connects your femur to your hip, so they have to move.

Like a.

Like a snake basically, and that's the only way that they have moved.

They have to move.

Sea lions they actually still have the ability to walk on all four If you're not sure whether it's a silion, if it's walking on all four, that's a selion.

Oh that's how you tell the difference.

Yeah, so you can see selion perfectly walking on all forward they sort of project the hind flippers forward and they can move on all four that's a selion. So is that and the ear that you can see the external ear on sea lions.

I feel like that's such a good life hack somehow in a trivia game that's going to come up important, or someone's going to time travel and be like, wait, I know this.

And the other part about how fast they move, they move faster than you think they move. I have had a male adult elephants hill which is something like three tons of glober and muscle chasing me up at June that it was about twenty feet high and had to run. I was basically playing bait so that the male will let us do the work that we need to do with females and have this male follow with me and

Never cock block a seal. Just leave it to the professionals who signed up for this life.

They could kill you. And a male elephant seel can kill a human for sure.

Really would they do it with their teeth? Essentially?

They're yeah, or just if they catch you, they're going to try to fight you. Three tones of animal that are usually very frustrated, especially in the breading season. Elephantis have the highestest of sterne concentration of any mammal. So you can imagine with all that the stostern going through their system how frustrated they are if they're not getting any females attention. So you don't want to be there.

So beware the horny, angry in cell pinnipeds, insliphant sales really oh man, Yeah, so leave them alone.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know what, I have a personal question in terms of like videos that we've seen. Do you know that one video of the walrus who looks really shy getting a birthday cake. Yeah, the birthday cake, by the way, it's just an elegant affair, kind of crowned in a row of fresh hairing and the birthday walrus is doubled over, bashfully covering its face with its flippers. Just imagine an a live coffee colored sleeping bag with mittens for hands

I'm sorry to say that that's party just training.

Okay, okay, okay, just making sure.

Yeah, I don't think I don't. I mean, after working with them for so many years, I can assure you that they don't feel any shame whatsoever anything. They will fart in your face. They will, they will vomit. They don't have any any visions.

They're not like a cake for me. Yeah, okay, they will fart, fish, fart right in your face and not have a second thought about it. Oh my gosh. Anne hard Key wants to know. Do they have tails? I met a sea lion and it had a small finger sized tail and it was so weird and cute.

Yeah, they do have tails. It's about side of your thumb, a little bit wider, and they move it. There's there's a fun fact, they say, you know, suddenly elephant seals stick their tongue out when they're under the stasia and we have no idea why.

Do you ever go flooby bloop bloopy.

With uh gloves in my hands? Gloves?

Yeah, that makes sense. Andrew Hageman, first time question asker wants to know when do baby seals lose their white fur and do they have like an ugly tough teenage phase like the rest of us or are they just cute forever?

Yeah.

So they're talking about seals that leave up in the Arctic, and they most of them are what we call capital breather, which means that they sort of optimize their time. They just want to be months for a short period of time. After birth, they give their pups of mealk that has a lot of fat, and their lactation periods are very short. As a matter of fact, that the shortest lactation period from any mammal is four days for the hooded seal.

You're you're on your own to do so puffs.

When they're born, they don't have that much glover, right, so they depend on this fur to keep born. But with a milk that is that fatty, they're going to put on a lot of blobber very very fast. And after they do that, they mold their coat, and they do look very ridiculous when that happens, but this usually a couple of months after all weeks. Two months after mom leaves, they're gonna mold their baby coat and they're

Ps I looked up pictures of their molting and they kind of resemble like a fake fur bench you left outside for a decade, patchy, worn, awkward, or like if you fell asleep midway through drunkenly shaving your head. We had a couple questions about teeth. Kayla Smith, I have a gray rich flight Clara Meyer, Julia Spindorf, and Manette Eaton first time question ask her people want to know about ab eater seal teeth.

That's awesome, all right.

I do my dissertation on crabatter seals and I'm working with them right now, so I love crabator seals.

Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay, try to describe what their teeth look like. Because I saw them for the first time and I was like, this is like a fractal. I feel like I'm on acid looking at a skull, what are they doing?

So it's a very complicated teeth structure, and if you look at them, they feed perfectly, and when they're closer jaws, it kind of looks like a cage.

Right, imagine triangular molars that have almost fractally swirls on all sides. They look like a van Go painting made of teeth. Horrifying, gorgeous, these Antarctic seal teeth.

And they're eating crell so they effectively are using their teeth as sieves. So if you think of a bating whale as filtered out saw panton of the water, crabator seals are the same thing, but with creole and they haven't involved all these complicated bailing structors like the whales have. But you can actually see how the the structure of their teeth are similar to that. So we've seen that in the evolution of cetations as well.

Yeah, so they look like they are absolute bone grinders, but really they're just for filter feeding tiny things grab the seals.

Their diet is over ninety percent cri crill.

Side note are these two inch long, shrimpy looking crustaceans.

And they just seen just tea that basically seems to filter out crell.

Are they eating any crabs?

No, the any crabs? I think, Wait, they call crab eater seals. I think the reason for that is that it's a mistranslation from the German.

Word for crustacean.

Someone assumed that when they were calling them crustacean eating seals, and someone translated that as crab eating seals.

Oh my god, because I saw those teeth and I was like, they must just be grinding for crazy crabs.

Number seals similar teeth as well. The per seals actually eat cream as well.

I'm so glad you mentioned leopard seals because Jennifer Chran wants to know was a leopard seal depicted somewhat accurately? And Happy Feet and Scotti d, Kimberly Cooley, Ellen Skelton, Helen Moore, and rich Flight all had similar leopard seal questions. I'm gonna read rich Flight's question verbatim. Are leopard seals just the most badass fucking seal in the world and do they actually have any predators? And Kimberly Cooley asked, do leopard seals only get a bad rap in movies

I mean there.

Making a living and they have to do what to do, whatever they have to do survive. They do have a bad reps somehow fair. They do eat out of puppies and penguin chicks and.

Adults, and that that's true.

They also eat fish. They also eat krell. Some liper seals hide fish that they've hunted and they put on the rocks in the water, and some other animals that seees where they're hiding they gon steal their fish. So they're very smart like that that I've seen. I've seen a lot of leper seals. They do get a bad reputation, but the things it's just not fair. They are super aggressive predator. So a diver died because a lubber seal killed her. I think it was a woman. Basically it

That's wow.

Okay, have you ever been chomped on bia seal?

No?

I'm one of the few of my colleagues that have never been beaten.

Oh good job.

I also think to be very careful. I do get a tunnel vision better. I'm somehow been lucky.

One question. A lot of folks had I'll list them all on a side. Sarah Raserah, Anthony Willis Junior, Becky the Sassy Seagrass, Scientist, Kathleen Sachs, Jennifer trand Diane Schuckman, shayel Zinc first time question asker, Alexandre Cattouol and Holly Spencer first time question asker one show. How badly is climate change currently affecting pinnipeds and are there any species which are in particular danger of extinction?

Yeah, we're predicting that some species are actually going to be able to exploit new habitats. So so the emphasis for example, they don't really like the ice. With the ice retreating Antarctica, they're now able to exploit new resources that weren't available to them back in the day.

It's a lot of the seals actually living in.

Arctic and Antarctic latitudes and they depend on eyes, So with the reduction of eyes, you're basically losing your habitat. So if there's no eye, it still going to be a lot of negative sequests for all these populations and species of seals.

And Louis says that the smaller inland seals are at the highest risk of extinction when the climate continues to warm,

I think that depends on where you are.

One to think that it's becoming more and more common, and maybe it's beeause of social media and the people to cell phones is harassment. What I was talking about earlier about not getting close to animals, let them be I mean enjoying nature, and you can take pictures of animals without actually having to disturb them, and that's probably the best thing to do.

You can use a zoom to take a picture of the seals instead of getting.

Too close to them, and the other thing. By far, I think that as a society, the biggest challenge that we're all facing this kind of change. So anything that we can do about kind of change to solve that problem is going to obviously help protecting these animals.

Well, on that note, we had a lot of folks who were kayakers write in rather than approaching seals on land, a lot of people wrote in about seals approaching them. Kathleen Sachs wants to know why did the seals slap a kayaker with an octopus? And Terry Goss wrote in I love this because Terry Gos wrote in a little

Close to you?

So the first one, I'm pretty sure that was I want to say he was going to start in first.

And the one that's app that that kayak.

With the with the ofs and and that is basically the kayakkers in the bad place at a bad time because seals, sea lions and particularly do that a lot. They bring this the prey up to the surface and then they shake their face their head violently and to sort of rep apart their prey. And this guy was probably just in the bad place at the bad time. So that's that's what happened all of these seals. I mean, I don't really have a straight answer. I don't These

Why not, right?

And someone could think also, maybe there's a shark in the water they just want to get out of the water. That could also be an alternative explanation. So the best thing to do is just to stay calm, not try to touch the I might just let it be and at some point it's going to go back to the water.

There's lots of video of.

Animals that do that on boats, for example, that are being chased by orcasts.

Oh, there are videos.

Of theaters and seals, and I've actually seen sea lions also that are under attacked by orcasts and they get super close to the boat or ship or try to climb up to not be.

In the water.

So if you see a seal trying to stow away on your canoe, am I just need a break or it's evading up blood theirs sty predator? Just don't go bananas with speculation. Oh, speaking of which, Morgan Jennison and m Madeline Lewis, Jade Pollard, Andrea Levinson and first time asker Ness had one question that was bananas. Several people wrote in a question I had no idea what they were talking about, but Vespa said, what makes them go into banana? Pos? Are they expecting me to draw them

So we also call it the donut? Sometimes they touch their flippers with their head and then take a little doughnut. The most like explanations that happens because they're trying to keep their flippers out of the water. If you think about that, when we're talking about the blobber and they're how well insulated they are. Their blobbers covering their entire body, so their entire body is really really well insulated. It

Do easily do.

They not sweat, no.

Cool so the only way to dump heat or warm up is through their flippers. And they have other other spots in their body there are highly vascularized. A lot of blood flows through those areas, and that's one of the reasons why they do the banana posts.

M hm, oh my gosh. One last question from a listener, Lizzie Carr summed it up for a lot of us wants to know our seals mean? Are nice? I read something recently that said they really mean, but they look so sweet my heart can't handle lip their decks.

I wonder if I say that, I'm kind of whenever I teach Amara mcclass some play that I try to apply a little bit of short therapy to my students and tell them seals, even though they look adorable and you want to hug them, they are wild animals and they can be mean animals. But I don't mean like like like that. I just basically mean that we have some sort of we sort of idealized seals and think that they are these cuddly animals and they're no, they're

There is animals.

I don't think there's I think humans are mean, I don't think animals are mean.

Well said, agreed, agreed on the topic of things that do or do not suck. That is the worst part about being a professional penepedologist who gets to travel so distant parts of the globe and gets to boop snoops and gets to walk on the ice. Like, there's got to be something that sucks.

It's not really about being a pinnipedologist, but it's more about I guess it goes back to being human, I guess, but in is I guess that's because of the competition is so fierce and so there's so few resources. Sometimes people forget about their ethics and the fact that they're humans and they do things that are not not very nice.

Let's just put it like that. So it's a very minority, very very minor minority. There's not that many case where that happens, but it does happen, and that's that's a big bummer to me.

The fact that you recognize that means you're probably not doing that, which is good. What about the best thing about your life as a pedopidologist.

There's a lot of goodly good things.

I mean, I was very negative about humans in the past answer on the first answer, but my colleagues are by by far one of the best humans beings that I've ever met, like I have, my best friends are pinnipedologies. My whole suple of colleagues just amazing. So that part is it's incredible. Travel is a really good thing. I've been to every continent on the planet for either meetings or fieldwork. But by far, I gotta say, working with

Oh yeah, there's there's no other thing like that.

Oh, just make sure to keep out running.

Them, Yeah, keep booping them.

Yeah, keep booping it out, running them. Oh this has been such a joy. I just can't thank you enough for you have been on my list for so long.

Oh, thank you.

So ask Arctic explorers adventurous questions, sometimes embarrassing ones. Because our time on the planet goes by fast, you might as well fill your skull with wonder So cut bangs, text your crush, leave your hair dye lifter on twice as long, and make the buttery jack reverse ombre a summer trend. If you have no idea what words I'm using, you can see my instagram at Ali Ward. I had a hair mishap and we're calling it the buttery Jack.