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

while I watched for an hour in a snowstorm. I returned to base by 3.30 pm – hard
going in the snow.
Then we kept watch on the females on Drying Point and at 4.50 pm the pregnant
female (marked yellow) gave birth. It took about ten minutes as I watched through
binoculars, and finally at 5 o’clock she swung around through 90° and the cord was
broken. Later I approached, but had great difficulty getting the pup away from her
for weighing. Its weight, taken after a struggle, was a huge 101 pounds; the length
nose-flipper 64 inches, and it had no teeth erupted; a fleshy 14 inch umbilical cord of
which the proximal 3 inches were black, was attached. The claws of the fore-flipper
were 1 1 2 inches long. At the base of the vibrissae were bright pink fleshy swellings,
which gave its face an odd appearance. Its natal hair was long (1-1 1 2 inches), sootyblack
and bedraggled. The bark was harsher than in the older pups of the green
harem. I tagged it for identification purposes, with a numbered metal tag I had
designed and made from the metal strip used for ringing large birds. The mother lay,
moaning with an occasional throbbing, which seemed to stick in her throat. The
maternal end of the cord hung out of the vagina and was expelled with the placenta
at 6.10 pm; it was a mass of engorged blood vessels and about 1 inch thick, ‘zonary’
type (ie a circular band), and about 10-12 inches broad. I examined the end of the
cord, which was ragged and frayed, due to the blood vessels unraveling; the
containing membrane was weak and would break easily. Apparently the 12-14 inches
section attached to the pup was much stronger which determined where the cord
broke – that is between the cow and the tough bit attached to the pup. I had no doubt
about it having been broken; the mother had not bitten through it.
Next morning, the green harem contained an extra cow, which I marked with a
green blob on the right ‘shoulder’. When I arrived they were all lying quietly, the bull
about 18 yards from the cows, but he became rather a nuisance and complicated
matters by bouncing over to see what was going on – bouncing in his blubber sheath
like a large, inflated tyre. The female and pup in Mirounga Flats (yellow harem) had
been moving around in an area of 20 x 10 yards and the ground was stained with
blood and faeces. The pup shivered almost incessantly, possibly because the thick
natal coat had been shed in utero, and the blubber wasn’t yet thick enough to
compensate for its loss? (Later I took a time-series of body temperatures to see how
they changed).
Returning to the green harem, I found it had calmed down in my absence. The
third female lay on her belly, occasionally raising the two ends of her body – pivoting
and rocking back and forth like a rocking horse. She made a low, sustained, moaning
noise and then moved over to female number 1, who was lying some yards away
with her pup. Number 3 rested her head on the hind-flipper of number 1, who tried
to move away and was snapped at. The pup of number 1 was barking and nuzzling
for the nipples, and she moved away with it, followed by number 3 who pivoted
around so that they were lying head to tail. Number 1 turned on her side for the pup
to feed, while number 2 lay quietly on her side, occasionally raising her hind flippers.
I then noticed that number 3 had a yellow mark, indicating that she had come over
from Drying Point. The female on Drying Point (Yellow l) was still passing blood and
mucus. Her pup was active and feeding; it could readily bend its fore-flippers in all
ways and scratched its back with ease.
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