The Affectionate Walrus a Week Ahead of Time Helps Very Little If They See the New Hydrophone Go In
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The Affectionate Walrus a week ahead of time helps very little if they see the new hydrophone go in. Many different species of very young seal If one throws a half gallon nursing bottle and sea lion pups are extremely friendly to half full of formula into their pool, they will manafter theyovercome their initial fear occasionally pick it up in their flippers, lie upon being captured. Sometimes this will on their back and nurse from thebottle while require a matter of days but in other species, holding it up over them with their flippers. such as a few-days-old Steller sea lion pup, Their baby-like whimper and low-pitch woof! they will have lost all sense of fear within the woof! and their apparent desire for physical first fifteen minutes after their capture. I have contact with human beings make them one sat down cross-legged on the snow three feet of the most attractive of the marine mam- in front of a Weddell seal cow and her pup mals. to get some very close-up pictures and when Thomas C. Poulter the moving camera started thepup came Biological Sonar Laboratory forward and rested its head on my knee and Stanford Research Institute watched. After five minutes of taking pic- Menlo Park, California tures, I got up and walked away and the COW never raised her head up off the snow. One might explain this on the basis of extremely The Geographical Position littlecontact with man on the part of the of the North Water Weddell seal in the Antarctic. But the walrus which has been hunted by the Eskimos for The name “North Water” was coined by many years is the most naturally affectionate the whalers in the last century to describe an of all marine mammals. area of open water that they almost invari- They weigh about one hundred and twenty ably found at the head ofBaffin Bay early pounds at birth and show almost no fear of in the season. It was the reward that made it man even up to a year of age in the wild. worth while to battertheir way, atcan- ~ Very young walrus can be easily trained to siderable risk, up the Greenlandcoast and nurse a special formulafrom a bottle and through the ice of Melville Bay as early as they require about a gallon of formula per May or early June. If they were lucky they day. In order to maketheir formula com- then had clear sailing to LancasterSound pare favourably with their mother’s milk, a and Pond Inlet, if unlucky they ran into the gallon of formula requires threequarts of “West Ice” on the west side of Baffin Bay, whipping cream with one pound of clam but in either case they were in whale country meatplus salt, minerals, and vitamins ho- early in the season. The feature is still well mogenized in it. As one would expect, they known andthe subject of muchattention, will gainas much as 12 pounds or more but there is a regrettable tendency to corrupt per week on such a diet. the simple and effective historic name to the Whereas the Weddell seal pupmay rest redundant form “North Open Water”. May I its head upon your knee, the walrus is not thereforepreface this note with a plea for satisfied unless it can climb all over you even the preservation of the original name. after he gets up to fifteen hundred pounds The open water was also well known to the or more. Eskimos of the Thule and Etah districts in It thereforesoon becomes unsafe to get SmithSound and later tothe Danes who into a pool with them because of the danger founded the first trading settlement in north- of being drowned, and out of water one may ern Greenland at Thule. But whereas the be pinned down so as to require help to get whalers knew it only in spring, to the Green- up, particularly if there is morethan one landers it was a winter phenomenon which walrus. If anyone sits down where there are restricted sledge travel but provided splendid two or three young walrus being raised by huntingconditions, asthe openwater is a hand, they will all try to climb upon you at refuge €or all kinds of marine mammals. the same time. Thus it is not surprising that past accounts In thecase of most marine mammals if any have presented considerablevariation and object such asa hydrophone is placed in their apparent disagreement in the actual position pool they completely ignore it, but the walrus of the feature, positions given varying from is there almost immediately and has it in his the area east of Lancaster Sound to the head mouth or is playing with it in his flippers. It of Smith Sound. That this was due simply to is therefore difficult toobtain underwater observations being made at different places recordings of them unless the hydrophone is and different times of year has long been placed in some inaccessible place. Even suspected by those attempting to synthesize placing dummy hydrophones in the tank for the available data, and this fact is now con- 43 8 A fifteen-day-oldwalrus (O. divergens) weighing 120 pounds, and comingfrom Gambell on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. The photograph was taken by ThomasC. Poulter who named herRoberta after a 9-year-old Eskimo girl, RobertaSlwooko, the youngest daughter of the family with whomhe lived at Gambell. (See note page438). .