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It is enough to look at the seal’s skull to understand what it is made of. If you didn’t know, you would think it is a wolf skull with fangs and predatory teeth designed to grab and cut meat. Indeed, seals are carnivores. They are not only predators, but also rather experienced and persistent hunters. The difference is that wolves hunt on land and seals hunt in the ocean. To help them in this, nature has provided them not only with fangs, but also with fins, torpedo bodies and layers of fat if they make their living in colder seas.
Seals are members Pinnipeds detachment, which is divided into three families and about 34 species. Two of these include real seals, fur seals, and sea lions. The 10-foot one-ton walrus with its famous tusks makes up a family of its own. Read on to find out what a seal’s diet consists of and how it gets its food.
What foods do seals eat?
As carnivores, seals eat aquatic animals, mainly fish. However, some seals have a surprisingly varied diet. For example, the endangered New Zealand sea lion eats not only fish, but squid, octopus and crustaceans such as shrimp. It even eats other seals and is known to catch and eat insects and seabirds.
Apparently, the walrus is a specialist in invertebrates. It accepts shellfish, sea worms, sea cucumbers, sea spray and other tunicates and soft corals. It hunts along the bottom of the sea and can find prey through its sensitive mustache. He uses flippers and blows jets of water onto the seabed to cleanse it. When the walrus finds prey, he grabs it with his lips and sucks the meat out of the shell. The walrus rarely eats seabirds and pieces of other seals, and may scavenge if it finds a dead whale.
The Antarctic fur seal’s diet consists mainly of krill, but they are known to eat penguins. It is known that sea seals eat ducks and gray seals eat porpoises. These porpoises can grow to over six feet in length and weigh 168 pounds, but adult seal bulls are larger. They can be over seven feet long and weigh 680 pounds.
How do seals hunt prey?
Some seals, such as the California sea lion, hunt alongside dolphins, which can chase large schools of fish. Many seals stretch far and wide and dive deep in search of prey. The Weddell seal can dive to a depth of 1,968.5 feet and remain submerged for an hour in search of shrimp and other bottom feeders. Sea seals can swim up to 31 miles from resting areas and remain there for several days in search of food.
Northern elephant seals swim up to 13,000 miles across the ocean looking for food and do not return to land until it is time to breed and moult. In addition, they can dive to over 5,000 feet and hold their breath for nearly two hours. They also have several physical aids that allow them to conserve energy and oxygen while diving.
The leopard seal has a good repertoire of hunting strategies. He chases penguins along the edges of the ice where the bird lives. When the penguin enters the water, the seal grabs it by the paws, shakes it and beats it to death. Then he rips the animal into manageable pieces. Like the walrus, the leopard seal feeds on sucking small fish. When it hunts for krill, the leopard seal feeds through a filter. Its back teeth are connected in such a way that it allows krill to be harvested from the ocean. It’s the same with the crabeater seal. The crabeater seal, by the way, does not eat much crabs, but specializes in krill.
The North Pacific strip seal has weaker tusks than some other seals, and they hunt their prey by piercing it with their teeth and swallowing it whole rather than tearing it apart.
Monk seals forage at the bottom of the sea and have been seen turning over rocks in search of prey. However, being fast swimmers, they can chase prey in open water.
Some seals have different strategies depending on the time of day. The Baikal seal uses its eyes to search for fish during the day and by touch at night to find crustaceans.
What animals eat seals?
The seals only look cute. These are large and aggressive animals, which do not have many predators, although people have taken a number of measures to improve their numbers. Most seals take on puppies or if they are sick or weak. Animals that eat seals include:
Next: Types of hounds
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
What kind of fish do seals eat?
The types of fish that feed on seals include:
• Patagonian toothfish
• Antarctic horse
• Dogfish
• Anchovies
• Herring
• Halibut
• Atlantic Argentine
• Red fish
• Pacific blue whiting
• Hake
• Guban
• Lampreys
• Sea bass
• Salmon
• Trout
• Ice fish
• Skates
• Rays
• Mackerel
• Pollock
• Fish-lantern
• Capelin
• flounder
• Shad
• Sea bass
• Acne
• Eelpout
• Golomyanka. Also called Baikal oilseed fish, it is a species of gobies endemic to Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal is home to the Baikal seals – rare freshwater seals.
• whitefish
• Antarctic silverfish
How many seals do they eat per day?
One rule of thumb is that a seal should eat 4 to 6 percent of its weight every day, but how much a seal actually eats depends on whether it is active or sedentary. Breeding or molting seals do not eat at all for a long time. A seated Weddell seal can eat about 22 pounds of food each day, while an active seal can eat over 100 pounds a day. An adult Weddell seal can weigh between 880 and 1320 pounds. A harbor seal, which is small for a seal, requires 12 to 18 pounds every day.
A gray seal usually needs 35 to 52 pounds each day, but as stated, a large gray seal can kill and eat a porpoise. A huge elephant seal needs to eat 180 to 270 pounds of seafood a day while at sea because when it gets out of the water it will starve, often for weeks. This is because it cannot enter the water during mating, fighting, giving birth, feeding the puppy or shedding its skin, and water is where the food is.
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