Deborah Callahan, age 12, of Indianapolis, Indiana, for her question:
How many babies does a seal have?
Almost always, a mother seal gives birth to a single baby. On rare occasions, twins are bores but triplet seals are unknown. The mother bears her next cuddly pup a year later. Life far the young seals is rough and risky and many fail to survive through their first summer. The birth rate is limited and the child mortality rate is rather high. So seal populations cannot multiply at a great rate. When a species is endangered, a lot of human help is needed to save it from extinction.
The seals are warn blooded, aii breathing mammals whose ancestors returned to live in the sea millions of years ago. They are fat and sassy characters, well padded with blubber under waterproof coats. Their limbs are flipper feet, specially adapted for aquatic exercises and lazy lolling on surf splashed rocks. A few seals are loners. But most species enjoy life as members of large families or herds.
Zoologists distinguish hair seals from fur seals, though both types favor the same sort of family life. . The most popular species, without a doubt, is a fur seal known to one and all as the California sea lion. This fellow is the tame clown who puts on such a show at the circus and starts the applause that he enjoys so much.
For nine months of the year, sea lion herds patrol the waters along California. Groups of females and their teenagers loll on the off shore rocks and do their best to charm the admiring tourists. The females are pregnant and during the spring they gradually migrate northward. Meantime, the male sea lions have reached their ancestral breeding grounds on rocky islands in the Bering Sea.
The ambition of each bull seal is to lord it over a harem of 60 or so wives. He spends and May contesting rival bulls and claiming a rocky rookery for his future family. The females and their year old pups arrive during June and July and each mother gives birth to a single, blue eyed pup. Twins are rare but not impossible.
The mother's milk is thick and rich and the baby seal grows fast. In a few days he can move around, which may save his life. The crowded rookery is a rowdy, hazardous place where fat females loll around and belligerent bulls get into terrifying fights. A baby seal is not a born swimmer and usually he resists his first lesson with all his might.
His mother persists and after a few weeks he learns to launch himself and splash safely around in shallow water. In a couple of months, the young smartie rides the craves and feels at home in the water. By this time his mother is pregnant again and soon the weary old bulls leave the rookeries. In late summer, the females and their young ones start southward. Next summer they will return and each mother expects to give birth to another baby seal.