Saturday, January 19, 2013

The Elephant Seal

What an awesome experience...

We took a drive to San Simeon in hopes of seeing a few of these pups, the elephant seals. They get their name from the adult males (also called a bull) whose nose has the form of an elephant! Cool, huh? The bull will lift its head a make this funny noise; it sounds like he's burping over and over to me. A bull can weigh as much as 5,ooo pounds. Wow! That's a lot of blubber!!

I was shocked at the number of them lying on the beach- hundreds of them! There were few bulls and hundreds of adult females along with their pups. They are very territorial!! The bulls are especially mean to each other, due to this is their breeding grounds. And, although the moms  have just given birth, they will mate again right away. I read that the fertilized egg will swim around in the uterus for three or four months before attaching to the wall. This allows the nursing mom to not loose too much weight and become weak. It takes 11 months before the mom will birth her next pup.

The coolest thing happened while watching these magnificent animals our creator made- I actually witnessed the miracle of life. I was standing on the peer talking with my dad, just feet away, and we saw one give birth. It took only about two seconds. Right away the mom starts to teach its new born. At first I thought she was crying. But within minutes the baby was mimicking her sound, and it became clear they were communicating. Also, she kept flinging dirt up on her back. In about 20 minutes the pup was trying to do the same. Because elephant seals have so much blubber they fling the dirt to keep themselves cool and so the don't sunburn. I couldn't believe how fast this baby was learning!

An amazing experience.

1 comment:

where's weaver said...

That is an amazing experience. What a miracle. Every time something like this happens, I just am in awe at what our dear Lord did for us. I also wonder how God could think of all of these billions of different aspects of life. Truly amazing.