Elephant Seal
Elephant seals (sea elephants) are large, oceangoing seals in the genus Mirounga. The two species, the northern elephant seal (M. angustirostris) and the southern elephant seal (M. leonina), both were hunted to the brink of extinction by the end of the 19th century, but numbers have since recovered.
The northern elephant seal, somewhat smaller than its southern relative, ranges over the Pacific coast of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The most northerly breeding location on the Pacific Coast is at Race Rocks, at the southern tip of Vancouver Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The southern elephant seal is found in the Southern Hemisphere on islands such as South Georgia, Macquarie Island, and on the coasts of New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina in the Peninsula Valdés, which is the fourth-largest elephant seal colony in the world. Fossils of an as yet unnamed species of Mirounga have been found in South Africa, and dated to the Miocene epoch.
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Famous quotes containing the words elephant and/or seal:
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He jumped so high he reached the sky,
And didn’t get back till the Fourth of July.”
—Unknown. I Asked My Mother (l. 1–4)
“The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed “the white slaves of the North,” for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)