There are about twenty million pinnipeds in the world. The fur seal belongs to a particular group of pinnipeds called "otariidae", which are pinnipeds with external ears, sometimes simply called "eared seals". The eared seals are sea lions and Fur Seals. The seals with internal ears are called true seals. There are thirteen species of otariidae, eight of which are types of Fur Seals and five of which are types of sea lions.
The Fur Seal's scientific name is "Callorhinus Ursinus". Like all seals they live in groups called herds or pods. The male is called "a bull", the female "a cow", the babies "pups" or "whelps".
Fur Seals live in most of the world. In addition to the Northern Fur Seal that lives in the Northern Pacific between Alaska and Siberia, Fur Seals can be found in the waters of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa, Antarctica, and off the coast of Baja California.
The ancestors of the Fur Seals were land animals, and it took thousands of years to adapt to the land and waters of the Arctic. They remained mammals, which means that when Fur Seals swim in icy waters they must be sure that there are many holes in the ice so they can breathe.
Male and female Fur Seals can be told apart in that females are lighter in color than males and that males have thicker fur on their necks. Newborns have black coats, which within their first year turn grayish-brown like their parents, and they have little teeth, which grow only when they are nursing steadily. If they stop nursing from any period of time, their teeth temporarily stop growing.
Fur Seals are warm blooded. This helps keep them warm, but because it is so cold in the Arctic that they have thick under and overcoats of fur that they shed once a year, as well as a one to six inch layer of blubber under the skin. Seals also have very long and sensitive whiskers that allow them to know when food or predators are nearby. They also have flippers that enable them to be fast and graceful swimmers. The flippers of an adult seal are about one and half feet long and six inches wide.
Fur Seals have good senses of sight and hearing, but not a very good sense of smelling, probably because the cold limits the scents around them and not much smelling is therefore needed.
When the Fur Seals aren't travelling, they live on the Pribilof and Commanders' Islands, located in the waters between Alaska and Siberia. They share this environment with walruses, whales, narwals, polar bears, other kinds of seals, octopus, squid, and many types of fish and birds. Of these animals, some are dangerous to the seals. Sharks, polar bears, and Killer Whales all eat seals, but the seal's main predator remains man. Humans hunt seals, even though in most places it is against the law, for their fur meat and oils.
Fur Seals are awkward on land, but not as awkward as true seals, and can move around on land better than true seals because they have larger front flippers and because of this can go on a top speed of five miles per hour.
Fur Seals live and migrate in groups. Eight months out of the year, the herd spends migrating between the Bering Sea and the mid-California coast, never going on shore. The rest of the year they spend in preparation for mating, giving birth, mating , and caring for the newborn pups.
Males arrive at rookeries in late May. They have noisy roaring fights with other males over mating territory. If the roaring doesn't settle the dispute by scaring off one of the males, two bulls will lunge at each other and fight physically, but they almost never fight until death.
When the territorial disputes have been decided, the females arrive. They come in early July, and when they get to the rookery they join the harem of one of the bulls. A harem is a group of females that mate with a single bull, and these may have as few as three and as many as forty cows. The bull and cow mate, and the cow will give birth the following year.
Females start giving birth at the age of five, and usually have babies every year until they are twenty-five, though they may live to be forty years or more.
Pregnancy lasts twelve months, but when a female becomes pregnant, the egg does not begin to develop in her womb until five months after it is fertilized. This insures that the baby will be born at the rookery instead of at sea. Usually females give birth to only a single pup, but in rare cases they have two.
The black-coated pups are born headfirst. Their mothers nurse them for two days, and then must go out to sea to eat and to regain their strength. The mother then comes back to nurse the pup for two more days before she returns again to the sea to eat. This pattern continues for four to six weeks. Each time the mother re-finds her pup by its odor and cry.
Every year half of the pups die soon after birth. They are trampled in the rookery by other seals, or they die of hookworm and other natural infections.
All seals are warm blooded. This helps keep them warm, but because it is so cold in the Arctic they also have an undercoat and overcoat of fur as well as one to six inch layer of blubber under their skin. Seals are all good swimmers, but eared seals can move around on land better than true seals with their larger front flippers. The Northern fur seal is the only breed which can sleep in the water, as its yearly migration keeps it far from land.
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