An Amazing Animal - Gray Seal

Long-fingered seal - a fairly large animal, whose body length is about two meters, in some individuals - and three. The body looks quite powerful, as for the head, then its front part is quite long, which follows from the name. These animals have thick mustaches, often with curved ends. By the way, the long-necked seal, the gray seal - are synonyms.

Appearance

The color of the wool of mature individuals varies considerably depending on the place of residence, sex and age. Most seals are gray in color, but shades can be anything from pale to saturated. Sometimes there are almost black individuals. The back of the seal is always colored slightly brighter than the belly. Throughout the body of the animal chaotically scattered more saturated than the main background, spots of different sizes and shapes. They can be oblong, angular, oval. On the sides and abdomen they are brighter and bright, and on the back - pale. The Baltic gray seal, this dearest ice lover, apparently differs in color from its fur from other individuals who prefer land.

Habitat and migration

Most of these animals inhabit the North Atlantic, namely its temperate zone. Everywhere they are found in the Baltic Sea. This includes Botnichesky (not all), Riga and the Gulf of Finland. Seals are also common from the Barents Sea to the English Channel, you can meet them and off the coast of Ireland and England. In addition, the Faroe, Orkney, Shetland and Hebrides islands did not become an exception . They live in the coastal waters of Central and Northern Norway, as well as Iceland. The gray seal, thus, occurs in many places. Its range is quite extensive.

There are two subspecies of gray seals: the Baltic, inhabiting the same sea, and the Atlantic, living in European waters.

What do these animals eat?

Long-nosed seals eat fish mainly, they do not use invertebrates very often and little by little. They also feed on shrimps, crabs and some species of squid. In the Baltic Sea a lot of food for them: cod, eels, salmon, sprat, bream. As for the Murmansk coast, there they catch a sparrow fish. They also eat cod. And what about European waters? There, seals feed on some species of flounder and cod, herring and halibut. But in the St. Lawrence Bay there is more food. There, in addition to flounder, cod and herring, there are also salmon, sharks, mackerel and stingrays. This feeds on the gray seal. The Red Book, by the way, has long been replenished by this animal.

Reproduction and growth

Long-tailed seals are interesting in that females reproduce in completely different times. And this applies not only to individuals from different habitats, but also from animals from the same population. Before all, the Baltic seals, who took a liking to the ice of the sea of the same name, As a rule, they bring offspring in late winter and early spring. What about animals that live elsewhere? All of them give birth on land, and this happens much later than the Baltic seals. The timing is pretty stretched. It is this gray seal that differs from many other animals.

The newly born babies are covered with snow-white, silky, long and thick hair. It has a brownish tinge. But soon there is a change of fur, and the young grow over with a short and thick hair, characteristic for sexually mature individuals. When females are fed with milk, they grow pretty quickly, it lasts about three weeks.

Some female individuals mature at the age of five, but by the age of six they are absolutely all sexually mature. And what about the males? They become adults, usually at the age of seven, but they begin to take part in breeding only when they are ten. It is at this age that a gray seal can already be considered sexually mature.

Lifestyle

The behavior of long-term seals depends mainly on what kind of ecological form they are. Let's look at the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Baltic Sea. There lives the ice form. During moulting and reproduction, these animals can be seen lying on ice floes near the shore. In other periods, the gray seal is almost constantly in the water.

As for individuals living in other territories, they several times over the year go to land, usually in places that they have long been chosen. These are mainly small islands or other hard-to-reach areas with rocky shores. However, it is important for seals that the surfaces are straight, and the slopes to the water are not too steep.

These animals tend to assemble into large groups, especially during breeding. They have two types of sexual relations: polygamous (besides them, characteristic yet for a sea elephant) and monogamous (typical of most real seals). The so-called harems can be observed exclusively on land - there often around a male a few female representatives gather.