Fur Seal There are three kinds of seal's families: the true seals, the walrus, and the eared seals. The fur seal is part of the eared seal family. They live in the Arctic. I think this kind of seal is adorable!
Seals evolved from bearlike carnivores about 25 million years ago. Early seal fossils are found in Europe's North Atlantic and in the Chesapeake Bay area (in the United States), also in the Mediterranean. Today most seals live in the cold waters near the Arctic and the Antarctic. It is known that some eared seals migrate seasonally over long distances usually after their summer breeding season.
In order to communicate, seals make sounds underwater. These sounds are whoops, screams, barks, moans, and wails. The fur seals walk clumsily on land or ice because they rotate their large flippers back and forth to function as legs.
Seals live most of their life in the water. They generally do not dive very deep and stay underwater for only a couple of minutes. As a seal starts to dive, its heart rate starts to slow to about one tenth of its heart rate at the water surface. The deepest diving seals stay underwater for one to two hours.
Older seals produce a think layer of fat called blubber. Most new born seals have little or no blubber. Many seal species develop a fur coat during infancy that traps the air next to the skin for an extra layer of insulation.
The fur seals commonly hunt penguins and other sea birds, smaller seals, as well as fish, squid, krill (looks like a shrimp), and other invertebrates. It also eats the carcasses of dead whales. The fur seal is hunted by large sharks, especially the great white sharks, the orca or killer whale, polar bears, and other seals. The greatest menace to seals are humans who have long hunted them for food and seal skin, which is used for clothing, housing, and even small boats. There is also a good organization that humans have started. It is called the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (CCAS). This group provides laws and rules so that so that the seals do not over populate and starve at the same time the laws state how many seals can be hunted each season.
Seals have cold flippers and warm hearts!
Bibliography:
This information was taken from an article contributed by :
Culliney, John L. "Seal (mammal). Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000.
at: http://encarta.msn.com 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. Last visited: January 2001.