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Mar 22, 2021 · Celebrate International Day of the Seal by learning a few facts about these semi-aquatic marine mammals. Seals and sea lions belong to a group of marine mammals called pinnipeds, which means fin or flipper-footed. They are adapted for life in the ocean, but come on land for long periods of time.
May 7, 2021 · Despite living in the same environment and doing largely the same things, seals have evolved two distinct ways to swim. One group of seals chiefly use their feet to propel them through the water, while the other uses their flippers to swim. This is curious, as both groups evolved from the same land-dwelling ancestor that slipped into the sea ...
May 7, 2021 · It’s one of the first studies to closely examine seal flippers as biomechanical tools adapted for swimming, according to Hocking, and helps fill in some vast gaps left by a limited fossil record ...
Despite looking similar, seals and sea lions propel themselves through the water in different ways. For the sea lion, swimming is all about the front flippers. In a sweeping motion, they stretch their long flippers out to the side and then quickly tuck them into their body to form a torpedo-like shape. Scientists refer to this motion as a ...
Sep 26, 2024 · seal, any of 32 species of web-footed aquatic mammal s that live chiefly in cold seas and whose body shape, round at the middle and tapered at the ends, is adapted to swift and graceful swimming. There are two types of seals: the earless, or true, seals (family Phocidae); and the eared seals (family Otariidae), which comprise the sea lion s and ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
A seal will swim approximately 15,000 to 20,000 miles (25,000 to 32,000 km) each year. They are capable of swimming at speeds up to 10 mph (16 kph) but usually travel more slowly to conserve energy. When away from the continental shelf, seals dive somewhat deeper during daylight hours than at night.
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May 7, 2021 · This is supported by footage of live leopard seals swimming at Taronga Zoo, where they used their front limbs to swim in a similar way to the fur seals and sea lions. This discovery shows how wing-like flippers can evolve in seals that already swim with their back feet, providing a pathway for the evolution of forelimb swimming in the fur seals and sea lions.
