How many flippers do seals have

Molting lasts one to two months. For that, they rely on their insulating blubber. Harbor seals are endothermic animals. They control their body temperatures by burning internal fuel, which in turn, keeps them warm. Their front teeth are sharp and pointed, and great for grasping and tearing. Back molars are used for crushing the shells of crustaceans and mollusks.

Being a pinniped, the Harbor seal can open and close its nostrils. When the nose muscles are relaxed, the nostrils are closed and airtight. The lenses in their eyes are adapted for focusing on refracted light in the water. Steller sea lions have golden-colored fur with darker extremities, and instead of the "bark" of the California sea lion, Stellers vocalize by growling or "bellowing". Explore This Park. Redwood National and State Parks California. Info Alerts Maps Calendar Reserve.

Alerts In Effect Dismiss. Dismiss View all alerts. Seals and Sea Lions, What is the Difference? What Are Pinnipeds? They have fat bellies that they slide on awkwardly as they move along land.

The fat has to be there in order to keep them warm. The overall size of seals will depend on the species you are discussing. The seals are about from 4 feet to 13 feet long and from pounds to 8, pounds weigh.

The coloring of seals are dark which allows them to absorb the heat from the sun. At the same time it allows them to be protected from it. They range in color from light gray to dark black depending on the species. There are some that are white in color as well. When they are in the water, a seal is able to benefit the most from its anatomy. They are large animals but able to gracefully move through the water at speeds up to 23 miles per hour. They use their whiskers for locating prey in these predominantly turbid waters.

Seals can feel the slightest movements in the water. They can also determine the size and shape of the fish from a distance. Seals do not have a preference for one specific fish species, but they usually catch fish that live close to the sea bottom. Young seals must teach themselves to eat and catch fish after nursing ends. In this period, young seals lose a lot of weight. But eventually, most of them learn it on time. A seal swims just as readily on its back as on its belly, standing upright or upside down.

The front flippers serve as paddles; the body and hind fins provide the propulsion. Seals can dive down to depths of hundreds of meters. During the first few minutes, they swim actively downwards, after which they go into a kind of gliding flight while they sink even deeper.

Their body is totally adapted to long and deep dives. Their blood can absorb much more oxygen than human blood. Furthermore, they can lower their heart rate tremendously during the dive, from 40 to less than 1 beat per minute. When they ascend from deep depths, they can pump out the inhaled air from the air sacs, preventing deadly nitrogen bubbles from entering the bloodstream. Once above water, the heart beat of a seal increases to beats per minute in order to provide enough oxygen for the organs.

The ancestors of seals lived on land. But that is hard to notice nowadays when you see a seal on land. In the course of millions of years, they have adapted in all kinds of ways to life in the sea. All these adaptations have made them very clumsy on land. That is why they can walk much better than seals. Seals drag their body over the ground with the help of their front flippers, a movement referred to as hobbling.

Seals sleep in the water as well as on land. In the water, they sleep floating in a standing position, like a fishing bobber, or floating horizontally on the surface. Because they are sleeping and not actively swimming, they can stay under water much longer than when hunting for food. There are known incidents where seals stay under water up to half an hour, however on the average, their stay is not longer than fifteen minutes.

Most parts of the seal are well insulated with a thick layer of blubber. Sometimes the layer is more than 5 centimeters thick. Only the flippers and head are without blubber. When it gets very cold, seals can pinch off the blood flow to their skin in order to preserve the heat.

They also use their flippers to regulate the body temperature. There are blood vessels just under the skin in the webbed area, between the toes of the flippers. Blood flowing to the flippers is cooled down by blood returning to the body and enters the flippers at a lower temperature.

Before returning to the body, it is warmed up by blood heading to the flippers. By regulating the temperature in this way, seals always have cold feet! That is why, as soon as the sandbanks appear above the surface, they try to keep their flippers out of the water. In that way, they lose less heat and are warmed by the sun. When it gets too warm, they let their flippers and head bungle in the water to cool off.

On the sandbanks in the Wadden Sea, you often see the seals lying in a typical banana pose. They probably do this to keep their head and flippers high and dry and therefore warm. Seals are well insulated with a thick layer of fat, with the exception of their head and flippers.