Elephant seals do not forget their enemies. We be taught concerning the nice beasts’ large beefs and why they matter.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Elephant seals are enormous, grey and blubbery. They’ve an enormous snout and a really distinctive voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT SEAL GRUNTING)
SUMMERS: However regardless of the apparent variations, elephant seals even have one thing in widespread with people – they do not neglect their enemies. Researchers from the College of California, Santa Cruz say male elephant seals bear in mind their competitors from earlier breeding seasons. Caroline Casey offered this analysis at a latest convention in Hawaii and joins us now. Hello there.
CAROLINE CASEY: Hello there. Thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being right here. So Caroline, I do know you will have been finding out seals for greater than a decade, so I simply need to begin off with an excellent fundamental query. What makes an elephant seal completely different from different seals?
CASEY: Oh, my gosh. I imply, for me, elephant seals are some of the wonderful animals within the animal kingdom. However amongst seals they’re, you already know, a number of the deepest divers of any seals. They’re one of many largest of all of the seal species. They’re probably the most sexually dimorphic, which means that males look completely different than females. And to me, they’ve some of the attention-grabbing breeding methods.
SUMMERS: Fascinating. OK, so how did you uncover that elephant seals bear in mind the calls of their rivals?
CASEY: Yeah. This can be a actually long-term examine that me and my colleagues have been evaluating for the previous 13 years at Ano Nuevo State Park, positioned in California. So at that web site, we monitor particular person male seals. As soon as they arrive on the breeding seashores – you already know, elephant seals go on these wonderful foraging migrations, they usually spend most of their life at sea. However every year, they arrive again to the identical websites yearly to breed. And the males arrive first, they usually combat for entry to breeding alternatives. So as soon as they arrive, our colleagues and I begin monitoring them. And now we have simply found so many wonderful issues about them, together with the truth that they’ve these distinctive voices. We have carried out a number of experiments that reveal that every male has a singular voice or identify…
(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT SEAL GRUNTING)
CASEY: …That they be taught and bear in mind in the course of the breeding season to chop down on the prices related to preventing as a result of they do not need to be preventing on a regular basis, however they should bear in mind who each other is. And so to do this, they mainly have names.
SUMMERS: Are you able to speak a bit of bit about the way you carried out this analysis and the way you particularly labored with these distinctive sounds that elephant seals make?
CASEY: Yeah, certain. So from our earlier analysis, we knew that males will reply deferentially relying on the dominance standing of the caller. So, for instance, if a male inside a season hears his most dominant rival, he’ll run away, even within the absence of the male being there themselves. And if he hears his most subordinate rival, he’ll typically assault or go in direction of the speaker or the sound. And so we might monitor males at – in – throughout one 12 months we might report his most acquainted dominant rivals, after which we might attempt to discover him once more the subsequent 12 months and play again the sounds of his acquainted rivals.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT SEAL GRUNTING)
CASEY: And what we needed to know was – are these males responding the identical approach that they’d have within the earlier 12 months or is every thing being reset or they do not perhaps recall these indicators over time? So these have been the kinds of questions that we have been asking.
SUMMERS: I need to ask, do you will have a favourite, like, particular person seal?
CASEY: Sure. You performed him originally of your intro, and I am so completely satisfied you probably did (laughter). It is X579.
SUMMERS: X579 – that is his identify?
(SOUNDBITE OF ELEPHANT SEAL GRUNTING)
CASEY: Sure, that is his identify. And he has such a singular name, and he simply was one in every of these males that got here again yearly. He began out as, like, this type of subordinate, not very dominant male, labored his approach up the dominance hierarchy after which was a dominant male for 3 years, three consecutive seasons. So he is simply this, like, unimaginable success story. So few males ever get to breed. You realize, lower than 5% of males born ever attain breeding standing or develop into what we name alpha males. And so he is simply – I liked him. He was nice.
SUMMERS: That is Caroline Casey, a analysis scientist on the College of California, Santa Cruz. Thanks a lot.
CASEY: Yeah, thanks for having me.
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