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Northern fur seal - CALLORHINUS URSINUS
Class: Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
The Name "Seal": "Seal" comes from the Old English word "seolh," for the animal.
Location: Northern Pacific Ocean
Habitat: Coastal waters; island rookeries in summer
Description: Adult males are dark brown, sometimes with grayish highlights on the back. The upper parts of females are grayer, while the underparts are paler brown. The ears are small, and the strong hind feet, which can be folded at an angle to the body, enable the northern fur seal to move rapidly on land. (Such traits make this a sealion rather than a seal.) These animals grow over six feet long, and can weigh over 600 pounds, while the weight female is about 80% of length and 20% of weight of males.
Behavior: This well-known seal spends most of the year at sea where it feeds principally on fish. Its breeding grounds are on the Pribilof and Commander islands, where males arrive in spring to establish territories in which harems of females assemble later.
Reproduction: Territorial males may remain for three or four months on the small territory with ten to twenty females, which come and go while breeding, bearing and nursing young. A single young is born each year after about a twelve-month gestation period. Young are well developed at birth and grow rapidly, going to sea on their own in the autumn.
Note: Indiscriminate hunting had decimated the northern fur seal population, but protective management over the past 70 years has enabled this species to make a spectacular comeback,
Go to the Carnivora Page to learn more about the all the meat-eating animals.
Or go to the Seal Index to study other
seals.
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