The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

Sea Lions gathered on one of the Pribylov Islands, watching for wives.

Thus, in about a month’s time, from the shore right inland, the whole island is covered with male seals. And now the mothers arrive, coming to the islands that their little ones may be born. They are very much smaller, not much more than four feet long, lighter in colour than the fathers, gentle and inoffensive; and as they swim up to the island each father seal tries, by coaxing, pulling, and tugging, to persuade a mate to come on to his rock. If he succeeds he has then to keep her, for the sea lions behind, which cannot reach the sea, are on the watch to steal her.

Now he might make quite sure of his prize if he would be content with one, but he wants several; and the next young mother swimming up calls off his attention, and while he is courting her his neighbour behind tries to carry his first wife away, lifting her by the back of the neck as a cat does a kitten. Then often a terrible battle begins, and the poor mothers are pulled hither and thither till one male seal secures her, and then the whole thing begins again. This constant fighting and lovemaking go on for several days till all the sea lions have wives—those on the shore many, those behind perhaps very few. Then all settle down quietly, the little sea lions are born, bleating like young lambs, and family life begins. But the peace does not last long, for no sooner are mothers able to leave their little ones than the old contest begins again, and happy the father who can keep his wives together through a whole season!

And now comes the most remarkable point. As a rule, seals are immense eaters, and they become very fat. But from the time that the fathers land upon the rocks till they go back to the water after about two months, they have never been known to leave their position to take food, so busy are they defending their wives. And when the two months are over, during which the little ones have been trying their strength in the waves and learning to swim, the fathers, which have grown thin and meagre, having used up all their fat, swim away and do not come back. The mothers, however, with the children, and those young bachelors, which have not yet taken wives, remain on the islands sporting and enjoying themselves till autumn, when they, too, start off for the open sea till spring comes round again.

Such is the history of the eared seals. And now that we have studied their form, and seen that their skeleton is like that of other animals, though their arms and legs are disguised as flippers, we shall understand our own home seals better; for the chief difference between them and the higher seals is merely that their front legs are much shorter, and that their hind legs are turned back so as to lie in a line with the body (see [Fig. 81]), while they are closely bound to the tail down right as far as the heel, so that they cannot throw their hind flippers forward nor use them in walking. Thus they have become still more completely aquatic animals, using their hind legs entirely in swimming, when they serve as great oars, working something like the screw of a steamer. The consequence is that they are terribly awkward on land, though they get along very fast by jerking their body forward, or sometimes by dragging themselves by their front flippers.

This, however, matters very little to them, for their home is the sea. True, they may often be seen lying asleep on sandbanks or on rocks jutting out of the water, but they rarely venture far up the land, always remaining where they can slip back into their true home at the least alarm. So they live in the seas almost all over the world. They may be known from the higher seals chiefly by their want of outer ears, their backward-turned legs, and their feet with both the great and little toes larger than the inner ones; but their life is much the same. Some live near our own shores, especially in Scotland; some are peculiar to Australia and New Zealand; others crowd the icy seas of Greenland, sleeping in large herds on the ice-fields, where the polar bear makes them his prey; while others again live on the pack ice round the South Pole, the huge Elephant seal, with its long tapir-like nose, basking on the shores of Kerguelen’s Land and the islands of the southern seas—a monster twelve feet or more long, with his smaller wives beside him.

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Thus the seals are bold ocean lovers, feeding entirely on animal food, and finding plenty of it in the wide sea as they roam. But there is another family of warm-blooded animals, pure vegetable-feeders, which also must have found their way in distant ages into the water; for they too are milk-givers, and though they have lost their hind legs, have still the front legs with all their proper bones, with the hands turned into flippers.

These animals are the curious sea-cows or Manatees, which wander under water along the east coast of Africa and west coast of South America, feeding in the bays and often up the rivers, on the seaweeds and water-plants of all kinds; while another kind with tusks, called the Dugong, feeds all along the shores of the Indian Ocean and Australia.