Baby Seals
Mature females of five to six years old can give birth
to a single baby seal per year, generally in the month
of February. At its birth, a seal baby weighs about
10 kg and is 80-85 cm in length. Though all the baby
seals look typically the same, they have distinct smell
from each other. The baby seals are covered with fluffy
white fur till they are 18 days old. The mother seal
smells her baby at birth and easily identifies its young
one by its smell later. Seal milk is so high in fat
even up to 50%, enabling the baby seals gain about 2
kilograms of weight per day.
Once a baby seal is born, the mother stops eating
and thrives on the fat storage in its body losing up
to 3 kilograms per day. The nursing lasts only for twelve
days and the mothers leave their babies abruptly after
this.
Once deserted by their mothers, the baby seals are
left to their own fate. A stranded seal baby cries at
first, eventually settling with a sedentary life for
a few days living on its fat store. This life continues
up to 25 days or more till the baby seal develops independence.
During this fasting period, they never drink or eat.
This is the crucial period when the seal babies are
vulnerable to hunting by polar bears and humans.
Baby seals are hunted for their meat, fur and skin.
Due to their helpless state and defenseless nature,
more than 30% of baby seals do not survive their first
month. Appearing in shining white color at their birth,
the fur darkens and begins to shed as the seal matures.
The protest for hunting baby seals began way back in
1970s. During 1980s, Europe banned the import of seal
fur and consequently the trading of white fur declined.
However, the concern that seals affect the industry
of cod fishery gave way to commercial operations of
seal hunt in many parts. Every year hundreds and thousands
of baby seals are killed on the ice covered east coast
of Canada for their valuable skin.
More than 95% of the seals killed are just born. During
the last three years alone, more than one million baby
seals were clubbed or shot to death. Most pitiably,
in several cases, they are skinned to bleeding even
as they are alive. Hastily rushing to the whelping grounds,
a boatful of sealers levy a death blow to immobilize
the seal babies in great numbers, later returning to
them to remove their skins. After this, thousands of
baby seal corpses are left to rot, as there is no market
for seal meat and oil.
According to Animal rights activists, hunting of seal
babies is the largest and cruelest hunts of marine mammals
in the world. Mass movements and governmental laws are
on the move to put an end to this cruelty.
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