As the snow continues to pile up outside, I can't help but think of polar predators. There are animals that live and hunt in the conditions that are keeping me inside today, and one of my favorites is the leopard seal. An apex predator in its Antarctic home, the leopard seal is an enormous pinniped that specializes in hunting penguins and other seals. Getting into the water with one is not something to be done on a whim, but as described by photographer Paul Nicklen, particularly friendly predators can be among the most frightening:
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"penguins and other seals"? That stopped me in my tracks for a moment.
But yeah, leopard seals are way cool.
This video always surprises me; I can't help but watch it whenever someone posts it or I stumble across it somehow. It is perhaps one of the strangest, yet most interesting stories I have heard regarding someone's interactions with leopard seals.
I'm sure I've heard a penguin delivery story before from a different photographer. If so maybe this is one of their default responses to non-fleeing seal-sized mammals?
It reminds me of the behavior of domestic female cats. As any cat owner knows, if you have a cat who knows how to kill, they get it their heads at some point that it's time you learned. That's when you wake up to find a half-dead bird in the bed and an expectant kitty looking up at you waiting for the coup-de-grace.
Does anyone know how female leopard seals raise their young? Is this same behavior seen in the wild between leopard seals and their newly weaned young? To what extent is leopard seal predation behavior instinctual, and to what extent is it learned? What about zoo-raised leopard seals?
HP, quite a few hunting behaviors are learned, even in snakes. Having raised a few pit vipers from birth, (yes, they give birth) I can tell you they aren't very good at hunting the first few times; they tend to miss or have poor strike timing or not open their mouth correctly-or at all (only one case, so not study-worthy, but it was interesting). Usually, they get better through trial-and-error.
The degree to which hunting itself is instinctive vs. learned is similarly quite complex, and even more so in mammals. It is very difficult to tease apart (in adults) how much of hunting behaviors are "learned" and how much is "instinctive." In neonates, it is difficult to tease apart how much of their difficulty comes from a lack of muscle coordination and how much comes from not "knowing" how to hunt.
In the case of pinnipeds, most pinnipeds have relatively little parental involvement, and most juveniles are on their own, so to speak. I'm not sure how much is known about the behavior of leopard seals - I'm sure they're less well studied than critters like harbor seals, northern fur seals, and california sea lions.
The best thing by far about those photos is the great look at the bizarrely shaped, tri-cuspate postcanine teeth of Hydrurga. The crabeater seal (Lobodon) has weird teeth like that as well.
I think this story compliments the video quite well:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0806_030806_sealkiller…
That is the interesting thing about leopard seals, that they are so friendly to humans; once they get to know them. Seems that as adults the species bonds to humans, much as owls, white rhinos, and tasmanian devils do. Must be our pheromones.
So what do you do when a leopard seal offers you a penguin? You accept the bird, praise the seal, and dispose of the carcass where the seal can't see you. Yes, people have tried eating penguin, but they are very oily and take a lot of time and work to prepare. They also have a very fishy taste according to the tales.
Leopard seals are awesome, as were the killer walruses of the Miocene.
> That is the interesting thing about leopard seals, that they are so
> friendly to humans
Not always, see comment # 7 above. Leopard seals are obviously very intelligent, and their behaviour seems to be quite complex and flexible. BTW, predation on amniotes happens in other species of seal, too, see here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/earth/2522622/Seal-cat… and, with fishes declining in numbers because of excessive harvesting by humans and/or competition by jellyfish, such cases might actually become more common.
Other than watching my own pets (cats/dog), I don't know much about animal behavior, but no one has mentioned the idea of delivering food as an act of submission. I always assumed my pets brought me things because they thought of me as the boss, not because they thought it was time for me to learn to hunt. Am I mistaken in this line of thinking?
Penelope; Thanks for the comment. That is the common interpretation of cats bringing little birds, mice, and shrews home, but it is not an act of submission. Your cat wants you to know how to hunt, and step 1 in hunting class involves bringing dead things home for you to eat. It is to familiarize the student (i.e. kittens) with what prey looks like and that it is edible before they start to learn how to hunt. So when your cat brings home dead things it is not saying "Thank you" but "Do you know how to get your own food?"
My mother's cat started bringing her presents when she was laid up with simultaneous flu and a broken leg. Pretty obvious nurturing from the cat.
The seal is so cool: do they have any idea if this is something seals would do socially between adults, or do we fall back on assuming they show slightly more parental involvement than other species?