The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

A Fur Seal,[183] one of the Sea Lions; and a common Seal.[184]

Showing how the Sea Lion walks on the flat hind feet, while the seal’s flippers lie back in a line with the body; note also the absence of an external ear in the seal.

They have evidently been very successful in exchanging flesh-feeding for fish-feeding, and if we consider for a moment what changes a four-footed land animal would wish to make in its body in order to swim and dive in the water, we shall see that these changes have taken place in the seals.

First, a flexible body is required to wind and twist rapidly in the water, and this the seal arrives at by having the cushions of gristle between its joints very large and thick, while even its ribs are joined to its back by gristly rods, making its whole body very lissom. Next, a small head, offering little resistance to the water is an advantage, and this we find in all seals, while the short neck and extremely sloping narrow shoulders well encased in fat, make the body slope away gently with no jutting angles, but a round smooth surface from head to tail where it narrows like the tail of a fish. The next step is to do away with long angular arms and legs, which would impede it in diving and swimming, and here the seal meets the difficulty, not by losing its leg and arm bones, but by having them so shortened and encased in the skin that only the useful broad flippers are free, while the hind legs are set upon a very narrow hip joint (see [Fig. 80]), so that they bend backwards and work close to the body. Lastly, such a warm-blooded animal would want clothing to prevent it from being chilled in icy cold water, and here we find two protections. First, under the skin is a layer of oily fat, which, while it reminds us of the fat accumulated by bears before they settle down to their winter’s sleep, has become in the seals a dense oily mass, acting like a thick blanket in keeping up the warmth of the body; and secondly, the seal, like its distant relations the bears, has a dense furry covering, and over this a number of coarse long hairs, which give it that shining oily look we notice in all seals. No doubt every one has wondered, when watching seals in zoological gardens, where the fur can be which makes our sealskin muffs and jackets. The fact is, that this under fur is quite out of sight in the living seal, being covered by the coarse hairs; but if we could turn these aside, even in common seals, we should see the soft undergrowth beneath, and in the fur seals it is much thicker. Now the roots of these coarse hairs are deeper in the flesh than the roots of the soft undergrowth, and when the uppermost layer of the skin on which the fur grows is sliced off, the coarse hairs are cut away from their deep roots below, and can then be pulled out, leaving only the fur behind.

The seals then, while they are in all main points constructed like land animals, have gained many advantages, not by having new parts, but by the old ones becoming so modified as to make them admirably fitted for a watery life; and when we add that they have large eyes well adapted for seeing under water, keen ears with little or no outer ear, which would be useless, but a very acute hearing apparatus within, and nostrils which will close firmly and keep the air in and the water out when they dive, we must acknowledge that they make good use of all parts of their body. Indeed, their breathing apparatus is the most curious of all, for they can remain under water sometimes for twenty minutes, and meanwhile the circulation of their blood is probably controlled by large reservoirs in the veins, which prevent it going back to the heart and lungs till it can be purified by fresh breath.

Now, if all these changes from a land to a water-frequenting animal have been made gradually, we shall expect to find some forms less altered than others, and so it is. The Walrus, which is not a seal, but a creature with a thick hide having no fur and only a few scattered hairs upon it, and long tusks in his mouth, is much more of a land-animal than the seals. He passes a great part of his life sauntering along on the low shores of the Arctic seas, digging up mussels, cockles, and clams with his long canine teeth or tusks; and in accordance with this we find that his hind legs are much freer than even those of the sea-lions, for the skin binding them to his body is broader and his hips are stronger, so that, as he throws his front flippers forwards, he can also throw out his feet and walk on all fours in a strange straddling manner. He is remarkably fierce and strong, and Captain Scoresby caught one once in the act of killing and eating a large narwhal, so that they are evidently not afraid of attacking even large animals. The walrus is even said to stand at bay on shore and fight his great destroyer the polar bear, throwing up his head so as to strike forcibly with his sharp tusks, but in this battle he is generally defeated. His tusks alone would suggest that he lives a good deal on land exposed to dangers, for his more aquatic relations the seals are without tusks, and though their teeth are sharp enough, and they fight among themselves, yet their way of escaping the great tyrant of the ice-fields is to slip into the water.

Beyond his tusks, and the fact that by sleeping many weeks on the ice in autumn he reminds us of the bears, the walrus’s life is not very interesting. They live in large shoals in the Arctic sea, climbing the rocks and ice with the help of their tusks, which they drive into the crevices and so haul themselves up. During the colder times just before our own, they came down into much lower latitudes than now, and we find their bones as far south as England in Europe and Virginia in America, and even in our day one has been seen off the west coast of Skye; but we know very little of their daily life or how they bring up their young ones.

Of Fur Seals and Sea Lions, however, we know a good deal, and a singular history it is. They spend the greater part of the year in huge shoals in the sea, rising and falling, gambolling and diving in the water, feeding on the fish, and probably migrating from colder to warmer seas in the winter from either pole. But the interesting time of their life is in the spring, when the northern eared seals have often been watched as they come to the shores of the Aleutian Isles to bring up their families.

For then begins the fight which seals shall get the most wives. Early in May the fathers begin to arrive—strong old seals, which have gone through the battle many years before and know the rules. They are huge fellows six or seven feet long, with enormous eye-teeth and cutting teeth next to them, which together grip like a vice. They come up at first singly and then in greater numbers, swimming powerfully and laying hold of the rocks with their flippers so as to haul themselves up on land, taking the best positions they can find on the edge of the water to watch for the arrival of the mothers. Yet still more and more fathers arrive as time goes on, and these are obliged to go farther inland, for all the shore stations are soon occupied, and each sea lion defends his own plot of ground with tooth and flipper.

Fig. 82.