The world of marine mammals is full of charismatic creatures.
Gentle giants...
Jesus Christ.
...floaty teddy bears, playful sea doggos.
But one particular species has gone its own way and turned itself into
a wonderful weirdo that wouldn't be out of place in a Star Wars movie.
Their appearance is even more striking when contrasted with their closest relatives,
which are basically a Disney character come to life.
These are the hosts of the most awkward family reunions: the seals.
Hi, I'm Danielle Dufault, you're watching Animalogic, and I am surrounded by harbour seals.
Today we're continuing on our short run of episodes
of marvellous massive mammals of the North American Pacific.
This area off the coast of Vancouver Island is home to an oddball couple of seals.
One is as cute as a button, and the other, well, I'm sure it has a very nice personality.
They could hardly look any more different, so let's start with what they have in common.
They're both members of the Phocidae family, also known as the true seals.
These chunky boys biology is geared for life in the water.
In order to reduce drag when diving, they lack external ears
and have backwards-facing hind flippers.
The drawback is that it also makes it harder for them to walk on land.
They have to drag themselves across the rocks to move around.
Their distant cousins, the sea lions, have similar lifestyles,
but their sideways pointing legs help them walk on land a little more gracefully.
Now let's take a look at their many differences.
First of all, their size disparity.
Elephant seals are one of the largest seals in the world,
while harbour seals are one of the smallest.
The local northern elephant seal bulls can weigh up to three tons
and measure five metres in length.
That's pretty much the same dimensions as an SUV.
Females are much smaller at three metres in length and a maximum weight of one ton.
Harbour seals are miniscule in comparison.
At about 150 kilograms, for the largest males,
they're a twentieth of the size of an elephant seal.
Females are a little smaller than the males,
but they're not quite as sexually dimorphic as their gigantic cousins.
Despite looking like cute water puppies,
harbour seals can't claim the title of smallest seal in the world.
That distinction goes to the adorable Baikal seals, which are half as big as harbour seals.
These Siberian cuties are also the only seals to live exclusively in freshwater.
These little seals are so cute.
I can't even stand it.
They camouflage really well with the rocks that they stay on,
which is kind of a gross fact because what they're camouflaging with is poop covered rocks.
So that's black with white splashes all over it.
So they kind of end up resembling that, but still very cute.
Now it's time to address the elephant in the room.
What did the harbour seal say to the elephant seal?
Why the long face?
The male elephant seals proboscis is the Swiss knife of animal appendages.
They make them look like overweight water Saigas, but they're incredibly useful.
They're secondary sexual characteristics, with the largest,
strongest males usually having the larger trunks.
So, if you're a male you don't want to challenge another male that has a much bigger schnozz.
Sometimes in nature, size does matter.
They have cavities inside it that act as resonators when they roar,
making elephant seals some of the loudest mammals on Earth.
The least obvious, but perhaps the most important, feature of the proboscis
is its ability to catch moisture from the air.
During the breeding season, males can go up to three months without food.
Since they get most of their water from their food,
it also means they can get dehydrated over time.
So being able to trap moisture in their proboscis is potentially life-saving.
Their breeding period is already dangerous enough.
In January, they start looking for ideal breeding spots
and fight each other for the best real estate.
The fights are pretty ridiculous.
A few weeks later, the females show up and choose the male with their favourite breeding grounds.
A big successful male with a nice, comfortable property, can have a harem of over 50 females.
In some extreme cases, reaching the triple digits.
That means that in a lifetime a big male can sire 500 pups.
Females are much smaller sometimes, just a tenth of the male's size,
making elephant seals the most sexually dimorphic mammals on Earth.
They don't have a proboscis as they don't fast nearly as long as the males
and can go back to water soon after giving birth, leaving the pups to fend for themselves.
Luckily for the seal pups, elephant seal milk is about 50%
fat, so they get lots of calories and grow quickly.
For context, deliciously thick cow milk is only about 3.5% fat.
Despite the whole harem thing, female elephant seals are actually fairly independent ladies.
They're loyal to the land, not to the man.
Males who don't have territories will try to sneak onto other males' land and mate with the females.
So the big male spends most of his time chasing away
younger opportunistic males, and little time actually copulating.
That's what they don't tell you about haram ownership.
The upkeep is a full-time job.
Harbour seals are a little more private about their breeding.
Courting and copulation takes place underwater, so nobody knows exactly how it happens.
All we know is that in early summer, females come out and give birth to well-developed pups.
They nurse for three to four weeks and then are ready to go out into the water.
Zero drama.
Feeding strategies are also affected by size.
Tiny harbour seals like relatively shallow waters like estuaries,
and even rivers, where they can catch fish like salmon and shad.
Female elephant seals go to more pelagic hunting grounds.
While males can catch their prey at the bottom of the ocean at depths of over 1500 metres.
Lanternfish and squid are their most common deepwater prey.
Mammals are not really meant to go so deep,
and so the Northern elephant seal has a few adaptations to help with deepwater.
The main one is the ability to store huge amounts of oxygen in their body.
They're the only animal known to store oxygenated red blood cells in their spleen,
which then get gradually released into their bloodstream.
Extra oxygen is stored in their muscles and their blood,
as they have high concentrations of oxygen-binding proteins.
On top of that, they can slow down their heartbeat and their metabolism.
All of this helps them hold their breath for up to a hundred minutes,
the longest of any mammals outside Cetaceans.
Harbour seals can hold their breath for a more modest, but still amazing, 30 minutes.
When they're hunting, they have to be careful not to become prey themselves.
Despite their size difference, elephant seals and harbour seals have the same main predators:
great white sharks and killer whales.
Well that was crazy.
And yet despite their formidable predators, they're thriving.
Both species are protected and their numbers have been growing steadily over the past few decades.
If you want to meet that giant that Luke Skywalker milked in
that movie, this is probably the closest you'll find on Earth.
Come visit when it's safe.
So what should I talk about next?
Please let me know in the comments and be sure to subscribe for new episodes every week.
Thanks for watching, see ya.