Animal · Antarctica, South Georgia, Chile
Leopard seal
Hydrurga leptonyx — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The leopard seal is a long, powerful Antarctic seal with a huge jaw and a spotted throat, and it is one of the very few seals that hunts other seals. Only the orca hunts it in turn.
Picture credit: Godot13 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Godot13 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Godot13 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the leopard seal live?
Home: Pack ice and cold seas around Antarctica.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Antarctica, South Georgia, Chile, New Zealand.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 2.4-3.5 m long, females larger than males. It weighs about 350 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
A leopard seal can open its jaws extremely wide, and its teeth do two completely different jobs. The sharp front teeth catch penguins, fish and young seals, while the back teeth lock together like a sieve, so the animal can take in a mouthful of water and strain out tiny krill. Krill makes up a large share of what many leopard seals eat, even though the seal is famous for chasing penguins at the ice edge. It lives alone on the Antarctic pack ice and finds prey in dark water with its sensitive whiskers. In the southern summer the males sing under the ice for hours on end. The only animal that hunts a leopard seal is the orca.
Find it on the globe
Leopard seal is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is a leopard seal dangerous to people?
It is a large predator, and it has attacked people a few times, once with a deadly outcome, so researchers in Antarctica keep their distance. Such cases stay rare, because hardly anyone lives where the seal does.
Why is it called a leopard seal?
Because of the dark spots scattered over its silvery throat and sides. The name also fits the way it hunts: alone, from an ambush, at the edge of the ice.
What do leopard seals eat?
Penguins, fish, squid and young seals, and also a great deal of krill, which it strains out of the water with back teeth that lock together like a sieve.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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