Northern Elephant Seals Gather Along California Coast

It is the time of 12 months when northern elephant seals, some as large as a automobile and weighing 5,000 kilos, collect in colonies alongside the California coast. They combat one another in noisy battles for the fitting to mate.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Presently yearly, northern elephant seals collect alongside the California coast. Will Huntsberry visited a colony of some 23,000 seals and despatched this audio postcard.

WILL HUNTSBERRY, BYLINE: At Piedras Blancas, it is the start of mating season. And the males are attempting to determine who's the strongest.

(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT SEALS GROWLING)

HUNTSBERRY: That sound you hear is not a diesel engine. It is the sound of warfare. Sexually mature males have enlarged, floppy noses that assist them make the growl. The alphas can weigh 5,000 kilos and be as large as a automobile. Once they combat, it is ugly. They carry their cumbersome our bodies excessive within the air after which strike onerous at one another with their enamel.

(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT SEALS GROWLING)

HUNTSBERRY: The preventing has large penalties. Those that win will find yourself with harems of round 20 to 30 females. However...

RON KAUTZ: Lower than 2 % of all of the males born will ever mate.

HUNTSBERRY: That is Ron Kautz. He is a volunteer tour information. The males, he says, will spend their complete lives practising these preventing abilities, possibly to no avail.

KAUTZ: Often what occurs is that one in all them will resolve - OK, you win. They usually'll again off.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: How previous is that one proper there?

KAUTZ: Which one?

HUNTSBERRY: Two younger brothers had some urgent questions for Kautz.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: What do the elephant seals eat?

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: I feel I do know - crabs.

KAUTZ: No, they eat just a few crabs. However largely, they eat squid and octopus and skates and rays...

HUNTSBERRY: Proper now, the seals aren't really consuming something. They migrate to Alaska twice every year to do all their feeding. Throughout January and February right here on the coast, the moms will delivery their pups after which breed with the alpha males. Every seal then leaves the seaside by itself to undertake a solo journey a number of thousand miles again to Alaska.

KAUTZ: Even when the pups depart right here, they depart right here one after the other.

HUNTSBERRY: The pups depart by themselves?

KAUTZ: Yeah.

HUNTSBERRY: They simply know?

KAUTZ: Yeah. Intuition says it is time to go. In case you're ever going to eat once more - you may't dwell off mother's milk endlessly.

HUNTSBERRY: Robust lesson.

For NPR Information, I am Will Huntsberry.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional data.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced utilizing a proprietary transcription course of developed with NPR. This textual content will not be in its remaining kind and could also be up to date or revised sooner or later. Accuracy and availability might range. The authoritative document of NPR's programming is the audio document.