14 DAY TRIAL // It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that life in the Antarctic and its adjacent regions is pretty rough. The weather is insanely harsh, extreme cold is part and parcel of everyday life and Santa lives at the other end of the world.
Still, it looks like some of the creatures populating this corner of the world have it way worse than others. To add to our shock and awe, these creatures are some of the cutest ever to walk the face of out good old Earth.
Without further ado, it's king penguins that should seriously consider finding a new home, or at least set up one or two neighborhood patrols. Otherwise, they might never be safe from the seals-turned-bullies that are now harassing them.
When young seals go bananas
A recent paper in the journal Springer says that, quite a while ago, in 2006, explorers hanging about on Marion Island in the sub-Antarctic chanced to witness a most disturbing incident. In a nutshell, they saw a male seal trying to mate with a king penguin.
Since no other seal had ever before been observed trying to start a family with a king penguin, so to speak, the wildlife researchers who witnessed this scene back in 2006 wrote the affair off as a mistake on behalf of the marine mammal.
Thus, they assumed that the Antarctic fur seal did not really want to mate with the penguin but was only looking to defend its territory. One other explanation they offered was that the seal wanted to play with the penguin and got carried away.
Then again, this bizarre incident might have also been the result of the seal's feeling frustrated for various reasons and taking it out on the defenseless bird, the explorers went on to argue.
The thing is that, having returned on Marion Island in the sub- Antarctic a while later, the researchers once again documented this behavior. This time, they saw three young male seals attempting to mate with three different king penguins.
No candlelight dinners for the penguins
In their paper in the journal Springer, the wildlife researchers detail that, having found a penguin to their liking, the male seals chased it around until they caught it. They then pinned it to the ground and mounted it. Apparently, the seals all tried to mate with their respective victim several times.
As if this weren't disturbing enough, the explorers say that, as far as they could tell, the mating attempts proved successful on several occasions. What's more, one of the seals went as far as to kill the poor bird after it was done harassing it.
“Honestly I did not expect that follow up sightings of a similar nature to that 2006 one would ever be made again, and certainly not on multiple occasions,” scientist Nico de Bruyn commented on these most recent incidents on Marion Island, as cited by IFL Science.
What is wrong with these seals?
Despite having documented this bizarre behavior on several occasions, researchers are pretty much clueless about its underlying causes. Since the male seals observed harassing penguins were all young when the incidents occurred, it could be that they were merely trying to shake off some frustrations.
The things is that, seeing how seals tend to learn by observing one another, it could happen that more such marine mammals will get into the habit of abusing king penguins in the years to come. Hoping to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, researchers will soon return to Marion Island.
