Leopard Seals - National Geographic Magazine
Leopard Seals
November 2006
By Kim Heacox
Photograph by Paul Nicklen
National Geographic Magazine
Of all the seals in the world, only one, the leopard seal, has the reputation of a true hunter, a top predator. At up to 12 feet (four meters) long and more than a thousand pounds (450 kilograms), it moves with surprising agility and speed, often along the edges of ice floes, patrolling for penguins and other prey. "Sea-leopards," early explorers called them. A "fierce, handsome brute," wrote Frank Worsley, Sir Ernest Shackleton's skipper on the famous 1914 Endurance expedition. The name comes from the seal's patterned skin, which Worsley described as "a fawn coat spotted all over with brown markings."
Every austral summer, leopard seals wait in shallow water off major penguin breeding colonies to capture newly fledged birds going to sea for the first time. The seals' teeth tell the story: front canines and incisors designed to capture and shred their prey; back molars with sharp edges for grasping and cutting, but also with interlocking cusps to sift krill. The seals have a surprisingly diverse diet: krill, penguins, other seals, fish, and squid—anything they can get their canines on. The other seals on the menu are crabeater seal pups, or, off the island of South Georgia, Antarctic fur seal pups.
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