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Though able to walk on land, they are truly at home in the water. Strong flippers and tails propel them and a streamlined body helps them cut through the water efficiently. It’s easy to tell the enormous, tusked walrus from other pinnipeds, but seals and sea lions are easy to confuse.
Jun 14, 2017 · Seals have short front flippers and un-rotatable rear flipper. Thus they cannot walk like sea lions can when they are out of the water. Instead they have to ungulate their bodies to produce forward movement.
Jun 14, 2017 · If you have ever attended a Seals & Sea Lions show at the Aquarium of the Pacific you’ve probably heard the term galumphing as a description of how a harbor seal moves on land. In this week’s...
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- Aquarium of the Pacific
- They have been around for a long time. Fossil records indicate that the ancestors of modern seals first entered the ocean on the west coast, about 28–30 million years ago.
- There are three different major types of pinnipeds. “Phocid seals” are also called “true seals” and include several species such as harbor seals and gray seals.
- They have whiskers they use like cats do. Seals and sea lions have many well-developed whiskers, much like cats. Like cats, they have a very acute sense of touch.
- They can go for long periods of time without eating. A seal’s body stores enough fat in the blubber layer to allow the animal to go for extended periods of time without eating.
Oct 26, 2023 · On land, seals can’t walk, and must undulate on their bellies, whereas sea lions use their large front and back flippers to “walk”. In Canada (marine regions of British Columbia in the Northeastern Pacific), we have two species of sea lions: Steller sea lion ( Eumetopias jubatus ) and the California sea lion ( Zalophus californianus ).
They have visible earflaps and use all four limbs for walking on land and use their front flippers for swimming. Their rear flippers, which are short and turn forward and backward, are most useful for getting around on land. Eared seals can move much faster on land than seals.
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Oct 11, 2016 · Also often referred to as the "walking seals", the eared seals can actually walk, and even run, quite rapidly when necessary. The "true seals" have no external ear flaps, smaller front flippers and rearward facing hind limbs that are fused together into one scalloped flipper.
