Fig. 80.
Skeleton of a Sea Lion.
Showing how the whole foot rests on the ground, as in the Bear Family.
th, thigh; l, leg; h, heel; f, foot; a, upper-arm; fa, fore arm; ha, hand.
These creatures, although they have “flippers,” and are truly fin-footed, are much more like land animals than the smaller seals, for they plant their whole foot on the ground as a bear does, and walk, or, more properly, “flop along” on all fours. A mere glance at the skeleton of the sea lion, which is one of these higher kind of seals with a slight outer ear,[182] shows that it is a four-footed animal, with five toes to each foot, the great toes and the thumbs being the largest. We can see distinctly the short thighs and the long shanks, which give the hind flippers their lanky appearance, and we see, too, the broad stumpy arms, which give such strength to the front flippers in swimming. For the eared seals and walruses use their fore flippers very much in the water, while the true seals swim almost entirely with the hind flippers, and use the front ones chiefly for guiding themselves.
And now if we turn to the living fur seal we find that the reasons are twofold which make us forget that his limbs are legs. In the first place, the skin of his body comes down very low over his arms (see [Fig. 81]), while the hand is encased in skin, with only mere traces of nails upon it Then as regards his hind legs, not only are the feet made into flippers, in which the toes are joined by a loose flexible skin, so that they can move them freely when swimming, but the legs themselves are strapped back by a skin passing right across his tail, so that his thighs are kept flat against his side, and only the lower part of the legs has power to move. We lose sight, then, of the limbs, and see very little more than the feet, which are disguised by being turned into flippers.
Now if we once think what is the object of a seal’s life, this curious change in its body is at once explained. For seals are the hunters of the sea; fish-food is to them what flesh-food is to lions, wolves, and bears, only that they have a much wider field to hunt in, for they have the whole ocean for their feeding ground, and no one to dispute it with them but the sea-otter in places near the land, and the porpoises and other fish-feeding whales out at sea. In consequence of this we find seals of some kind in almost all parts of the world, except the Indian Ocean, though they evidently prefer the cooler regions. Even the large sea lions live in the North Pacific, as far up as the Aleutian Isles, and in the South Pacific down to the Falkland Islands and Kerguelen’s Land, and play about the shores of the Cape, New Zealand, and Australia.
Fig. 81.
