Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

edge. Next day five cow elephants were near the ice edge, two moving west some
way in from the edge and two large bulls lay near Shag Rock.
On 8 Oct there were still five elephants in a group near the ice edge. Were these
females and were they going to give birth on the ice? If so it would be an exciting
development, for this had never been reported. Two elephants were moving
westward and were just outside Outer Islet that morning. I assumed they were
females because they moved very slowly and with frequent halts, and held their hind
ends off the ground when moving. At 10.30 am they reached Drying Point beach, a
good two miles from the ice edge, having spent at least 24 hours on the journey. I
went over to Drying Point to check: both were females, large, fairly old and very
corpulent; they looked in excellent condition. Using my brush-on-a-pole, I marked
them with yellow paint on the side near the tail – for future identification. The larger
of the two had many recent open scars on the back of her neck and on her foreflippers;
I gave her one yellow mark. The other was not so aggressive, she stayed put
and I gave her two yellow strokes. Then I went on overland to Stygian Cove and
back around the coast.
There were now two females and a very large male at the Wallows, with one
pup, and I painted all of them green. They were three miles in from the ice edge and
the birth may have been premature; the pup was very recent and still caked with
blood and the mother, seemed exhausted – no sign of the placenta, which the skuas
had taken. Lying around in the snow were tufts of natal hair, lanugo, a sooty-brown
in colour. The pup had a tar-black face and flippers, black dorsal surface and a
longitudinal band of black underneath, tailing off in front of its umbilicus; tufts of
natal hair persisted in these black areas. The rest of the coat was a light silvery-buff in
colour and the hairs were short, curly and springy. Most of the natal hair had been
shed in utero and the pup was now in its second coat, a surprising observation as
pre-natal moulting had never been recorded. Fresh blood was on the cord, which
was about ten inches long. The pup scratched frequently, especially where blood and
slime were caked on the coat. The fore-flippers were very flexible, but otherwise it
was still and quiet and it shivered; it's bark was harsh, throaty and low pitched.
There were several lines of tracks about this incipient harem, which were fresh –
no more than a day old. They were absent two days before. I put the time of birth at
early in the morning or the previous night. The pup was still wet and bedraggled and
had a high-pitched bark – like a Pekingese dog. It moved in the usual elephant
fashion, but with little pelvic thrust. I noticed that it had a tendency to arch the body,
lifting the hindquarters as the adults did – in contrast to the other species. The most
striking features were the large size of its head, the prominence of its nose and the
‘wasted’ body.
One female lay on her side giving convulsive shudders, raising her hind-flippers;
the other roared and made for me when I approached. She then moved over to the
bull, which attempted to pair with her. He placed his chin on her back, then got a
flipper over her and brought the hind part of his body round sideways so that he was
lying on his side parallel with her. She snapped at him and tried to break away,
roaring, but the bull grasped her by the neck with his teeth. Unwilling she angled her
body away. Occasionally the frustrated bull roared, throaty and low pitched. The
pup followed its mother, barking and yelping. Then all four them lay motionless
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