For elephant seals – one of the most distinctive of the 33 species that comprise the world’s seal family – it is hard work to stay fat.
Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2021
Scientists have conducted the most thorough study to date of the unique feeding behavior of northern elephant seals, focusing on the females of the species during arduous two-month post-breeding migrations in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.
The seals were found to spend upwards of 20 hours every day – and sometimes a full 24 hours – in continuous deep-diving to feed on multitudes of small fish, rather than the larger prey favored by other deep-diving marine mammals, to gain the body fat essential for successful reproduction and insulation in the frigid depths.
Elephant seals get their name from the prominent noses of the males that resemble an elephant’s trunk. There are two species – the northern elephant seal and the slightly larger southern elephant seal.