Everyone is afraid of something, and it often has to do with what is most likely to cause an unpleasant and premature death. If you live in the Cretaceous period, a T-rex might be the stuff of nightmares, while a mountain goat living today in the European Alps might be constantly on high alert for a golden eagle that swoops down and drops it off a cliff. But if you're an animal – almost any animal – living off the coast of Antarctica, the real horror show begins when the leopard seals appear.
Leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) are apex predators and the second largest seal in Antarctic coastal ecosystems, after the southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina). They are extremely agile and fast swimmers with long, muscular bodies. Its common name references the large tabby cats of Africa and Asia, because both are terrifying predators with giant, powerful jaws full of sharp teeth, and their fur is also spotted.
“Leopard seals eat almost everything, from krill to penguins to fur seals and fur seals,” says Daniel Costa, director of the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Cruz, who studies movement patterns, diving behavior, physiology and diet in leopard seals. leopard. “They normally frequent penguin and seal colonies. When the penguins or seals enter the water, the leopard seal very slowly approaches them and catches them. They then swim further from shore and begin tearing the seal or penguin apart. Leopard seals also attack and kill juvenile crabeater seals – we have seen adult crabeater seals that have been attacked by leopard seals.”
Leopard seals are poachers, but small krill are harder to find than a floating fish or seabird. However, their front teeth are sharp and great for ripping and tearing, but they also have specialized molars that they use to filter krill from the water as they swim.
A study published in 2019 in the Canadian Journal of Zoology found that leopard seals hide their prey like cats, sometimes killing a seal pup and storing it somewhere safe to eat later when they are hungry.
The Leopard Seal Life Cycle
Leopard seals are pagophilic, meaning they live primarily in ice packs, and are found primarily in Antarctica, although they have been sighted in Australia, South America, New Zealand, and South Africa. They live alone for most of of their lives, except when the mother is with her calf.
“Not much is known about the reproductive biology of leopard seals,” says Costa. “We know that they give birth in the ice during the austral spring [spring in the Southern Hemisphere], in October and November. They give birth to a single cub. If they are like other ice seals, they nurse their pup while fasting and not then for a period of a few weeks. Their milk is probably very high in fat – 40 to 50 percent fat.
Your reproductive system is equally mysterious. Male leopard seals spend many hours each day making loud underwater calls during the southern summer, from November to March, possibly as a way of warding off intruders into their territory and calling potential mates.
In their romantic lives, leopard seals likely practice what we call serial monogamy, says Costa:
“A male stays with a female while she has her calf, waiting for her to come into heat. After breeding, he looks for another female to breed with. Very little is known about this, but males have a very high rate. frequency vocalization that is likely related to social display.”
Conservation Pressures
As predators at the top of the food chain with no real threats other than humans and the killer whale, leopard seals do quite well. But like virtually every other animal that depends on Antarctic ice for its livelihood, the threat of climate change weighs heavily on the long-term survival of leopard seals.
“There are no direct threats to leopard seals, other than climate change that could potentially reduce the abundance or distribution of their prey,” says Costa. “In one of the seal colonies I worked at, the number of leopard seals increased dramatically from a few to more than 30 individuals. some seal and penguin colonies because other food resources are less available.”
Now this is interesting
Leopard seals are generally not dangerous to people, but a British scientist working in Antarctica was dragged underwater and drowned by one in 2003.
