Bobby Lineback, age 10, of Asheville, North Carolina, for his question:

Is a walrus the same as an elephant seal?

A walrus is a walrus and an elephant seal is an elephant seal, but the two different animals are cousins that belong in the seal tribe. The whopping sea elephant is the giant of this ocean going tribe. He weighs a whole ton more than the walrus, who is no midget. Sad to say, both these splendid animals are now scarce but conservationists are trying to encourage them to multiply.

Both the walrus and the elephant seal belong in the Pinnipedia Order, meaning the finny footed animals. However, because of very different features, they are classified in separate families of that order. The walrus has the family Odobenidae all to himself. The sea elephant belongs with the true seals, also called the ear¬less or hair seals, in the family Phocidae. These fellows have coats of short hair and no visible outer ears. Their back flippers are useless on land and they are always more at home in the water. The sea elephant is at home on and off the ice floes of the bleak Arctic and Antartic. In the past, his more numerous family enjoyed life around many milder shores and islands. The few remaining walruses of the world live only in the icy Artic regions.

A bull sea elephant may measure 18 feet from his dangling nose to the tip of his back finny feet, and he may weigh more than two and a half tons. Of course he needs a lot of blubbery fat to keep him warm in his polar oceans. The fat is piled around his body in layers and he looks somewhat like a pile of over sized auto inner tubes. His outstanding feature is a dangling nose, somewhat like an elephant trunk. He uses it to scare enemies away from his herd of 20 or so wives and their calves. When suspicious, he fills his hollow trunk with air and trumpets a raging roar that can be heard far and wide. A mother elephant seal is about 10 feet'long.

A bull walrus is about 10 feet long and weighs 1 1/2 tons, a ton less than his giant cousin. His wide pug face bristles with short whiskers and he has no trunk. Instead, he has a splendid pair of ivory tusks, maybe two feet long. His many wives are merely eight feet long and weigh no more than one ton apiece    but they too have walrus tusks. A mother bears one calf in May. He is about four feet long, clothed in soft gray woolly hair and he feeds on mother's milk for two years. Mrs. Elephant Seal bears one or two calves in early summer. They are only 2 1/2 feet  long and ready to give up mother's milk after six weeks, though they stay close to home until their first birthday.

Both the walrus and the elephant seal have been slaughtered by Man The Hunter. In 1911, conservationists set about saving the elephant seal from extinction. They posted a garrison on Guadalupe Island off Lower California, where a few of the giants had survived, and shot at hunters who tried to harm them. The walrus is still hunted by Eskimos but only a few of the tusky fellows remain and they are hard to find. They shy away from the shores and stay out to sea around floating chunks of ice.