A, Skull of Old Animal; B, Palate and Dentition of Young; C, Lower Jaw and Dentition of Young.
THE WALRUS, OR MORSE.[208]—So far as looks are concerned, scarcely a more uninviting fellow can be conceived than this animal, which the Greenlanders and Eskimo call “Awŭk,” from its peculiar guttural cry. It is better known among our own countrymen as the Sea Horse, though naturalists more frequently prefer Walrus, or Morse, words respectively modified derivatives from the old Norse and Lapp languages. Its present range is a narrow belt girding Labrador, Hudson’s and Baffin’s Bays, and skirting the East Greenland coast towards Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, and still farther stretching on to Behring’s Strait and the islands off Alaska. Certain writers are inclined to regard the animal found in the North Pacific as a different species from that inhabiting the North Atlantic seas; but on this head no very justifiable evidence is yet offered. Meantime, its geographical distribution, briefly defined, is the Arctic Circle. Here, thinned by its hereditary enemy, the Polar Bear on the land side, and stricken down wholesale by man seawards, the day of its extermination seems not far distant. The living Walrus, indeed, presents to us a solitary example of a family once more numerous and widespread, and doubtless coincident with a period when climate was different from that now existing where their fossil remains have been discovered. In the deposits of Virginia, on the American Continent, in the Suffolk crag, and possibly in contemporaneous beds around the neighbourhood of Antwerp, bones of Walruses allied to the present northern form have been dug up. But others, moreover, have been found which, from greater size and characteristic peculiarities, evidently belonged to at least two genera (Trichechodon and Alachtherium) distinct from the Arctic animal. Thus, by degrees, the more massive representatives of the family Trichechidæ have died out, while the last of the descendants visibly diminish amongst the bergs of their secluded, ice-bound home.
The Walrus of the present day is a creature which attains large dimensions. Elliott mentions a great fellow, shot in the Behring Sea, nearly 13 feet long, and with a girth of 14 feet; and he estimates the gross weight of an ordinary full-grown male at 2,000 lbs. Well have some likened the hide, which is of a tawny brown colour, to a tough, flexible coat of mail, which harpoon and even bullets penetrate with difficulty. In old age these creatures do not only become obese, shapeless masses, but their gnarled hide, scarred by tusk-marks, bullet, or harpoon wounds, gets blotchy, pustular, and hairless. This, with small, fierce, bloodshot eye, in marked contrast with that of the Seals, and formidable pair of tusks, gives it a ferocious and demoniacal look.
The unusually flattened head seems disproportionately small to the great neck and sack-like body, the tusks and moustaches being all in all either in profile or front view. Their movement on land is very awkward and droll. With high-set shoulders and low hind-quarters, and squat limbs to their heavy body, the fore feet are successively thrust flat forwards from the wrist, each followed by a hitch and swing of the hind foot, as from a pivot on the heel, ending in a sudden sort of jerk or check. Thus they straddle in a clumsy, indolent way along the rough ice, in emergency exerting themselves into a kind of hobbling canter.
This ungainly creature, though so repellent in features, is in reality quiet and inoffensive, unless attacked or roused in love-time, when woe betide those who measure his strength, especially if he reach his native watery element. They are very gregarious, seldom being met with singly, but often in herds from a dozen to several hundreds, as Captain Cook long ago observed. They crowd up from the water on to the rocks or ice one after the other, grunting and bellowing. The first arrived is no sooner composed in sleeping trim, than a second comes prodding and poking with its blunt tusks, forcing room for itself, while the first is urged farther from the water; the second in turn is similarly treated by the third; and so on, until numbers will lie packed close, heads and tails resting against and on each other, in the most convenient and friendly manner possible. There they sleep and snore to their hearts’ content, but nevertheless, according to Elliott, keep guard in a singular fashion. Some one would seem to disturb another; then this fellow would raise his head listlessly, give a grunt and a poke to his nearest companion, who would rouse up a few minutes, also grunt, and pass the watchword to his neighbour, and so on through the herd, this disturbance always keeping some few on the alert. Danger announced, they scuttle pell-mell and topsy-turvy into the water.
Once in the sea, their sluggish deportment vanishes, and activity is the order of the day. Curiosity aroused, or attack threatened, as Lamont remarks, the herd keep near each other. One moment a crowd of grisly heads and long, gleaming white tusks are above the waves; then follow snorting and hasty breathing; immediately thereafter, a host of brown hemispherical backs, followed by pairs of flourishing hind-flippers, and the lot have dived, again to appear at an interval, and the same performance be gone through. If one gets injured, or a young one is in danger, the host of Walruses close round the boat, grunting, rearing, and snorting, and if their wrath be roused, they rush simultaneously to the fight, and attack the boat. When a young Sea Horse is wounded, the parent becomes desperate, and fearlessly exposes herself, or seizes the youngster under her fore-flipper, and makes off, or defends herself and progeny to the death. There is no security to the hunter on the ice, which the animal in its fury will break through, even when six inches thick.
The tusks vary from eight inches to two feet long, and may weigh from five to fifteen pounds; in the males they are generally supposed to be thicker and more divergent. These teeth continuously grow, and, as they wear away, their interior becomes filled with tooth bone. In the young Walrus, there appears to be more teeth than in the adult; but these, as Professor Flower has shown, are exceedingly diminutive denticles, and may or may not remain through life. The first tooth of the molar series in the upper jaw, as in the Dog and other Carnivora, has no predecessor; but the second and third are preceded by milk teeth. In the lower jaw there are three milk teeth.
The formidable canines, when employed as offensive weapons (Lamont notes), not only are used downwards, but by a quick turn of the neck the animal strikes upwards and sideways with equal dexterity. Again, in raising the body out of the water on to the ice-floe after the first jerk forwards, the tusks are dug into the ice with terrific force, and thus the body is hauled on till footing is gained. Broken tusks are by no means rare. But the most important function performed by the tusks is as instruments for procuring food. A part of its time is spent by the Morse on banks and among shoal water, where lie buried in the mud shell-fish in abundance. Certain kinds of Mussels and Cockles are here dug up by the tusks and gulped, often shells and all; but occasionally it swallows Shrimps, Starfish, and marine worms. Dr. Robert Brown states that whenever killed near a Whale’s carcass, the stomach of the Walrus was invariably found crammed with the Whale-flesh. Some say they eat sea-weeds; but the young animal possessed by the Zoological Society, though tried by Mr. Bartlett, refused these, but greedily took Mussels, Whelks, Clams, and the stomachs and intestines and other soft part of fishes cut small. This said young one could not swallow anything larger than a walnut, and from the way in which it used its mouth bristles, in brushing backwards and forwards the food and sucking everything through them, their use as a sieve was very manifest.
Whatsoever their diet they thrive on it, and store up much fat, though less proportionally than Seals. Like some of the Sea Lions, they have the curious habit of swallowing stones, the economy of which is imperfectly understood. But there can be no doubt of the fact, or of another equally strange, that of their protracted fasts. During the autumn months the Sea Horses will muster in force on land, and quite lethargic there doze for days or weeks without tasting food, thus recalling the hibernation of the Bear tribe. The Walrus is infested with skin-parasites and intestinal-worms, and the pebble-swallowing habit is supposed to relieve the irritation of the latter.
Not unfrequently a troop will be found sleeping bolt upright in the water, and so soundly that a boat can approach close to them before they awake. They can remain under water, some say an hour, before requiring to take breath, but the length of time doubtless depends on circumstances; and ordinarily, or when suddenly disturbed, barely a third of that time.