Animal · South Georgia, French Southern and Antarctic Lands, Australia
Southern elephant seal
Mirounga leonina — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The southern elephant seal is the largest seal on Earth, and a grown male can weigh as much as forty people and carries a trunk-like nose. Females are far smaller and spend most of the year hunting squid in the cold Southern Ocean.
Picture credit: Sastognuti (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Antoine Lamielle (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Antoine Lamielle (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the southern elephant seal live?
Home: Cold southern seas and beaches on remote islands.
In the wild it lives in these countries: South Georgia, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, the Falkland Islands, Antarctica.
Conservation status from the IUCN: vulnerable.
The short profile
Fully grown: males up to 5.8 m long, females about 3 m. It weighs about 2 000 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
Elephant seals spend most of their lives at sea, and they dive deeper than any other seal: more than two thousand metres down, staying under for twenty minutes or longer. Once a year they haul out onto beaches on islands such as South Georgia, Kerguelen and Macquarie to breed and to moult. The biggest males, called beachmasters, blow up their nose to roar at each other, and if roaring does not settle the question they push chest to chest until one gives way. A newborn pup drinks milk so rich that it roughly triples its weight in about three weeks. Hunters almost wiped the species out in the nineteenth century for its oil; numbers recovered, but bird flu has recently killed many pups, and the seal is now listed as vulnerable.
Find it on the globe
Southern elephant 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
How deep can an elephant seal dive?
Deeper than any other seal. Dives of several hundred metres are normal and the record is over two thousand metres, with the animal holding its breath for twenty minutes or more. A thick layer of blubber and blood full of oxygen make it possible.
Why is it called an elephant seal?
Because of the male's nose. As he grows up it swells into a short trunk that hangs over his mouth, and he inflates it to make his roar louder during the breeding season. His enormous size adds to the comparison.
How heavy is a southern elephant seal?
A big male reaches about three tonnes, and the heaviest recorded were even more, so one animal can weigh as much as a small lorry. Females stay between 350 and 900 kilograms, which is four or five times lighter.
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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