The northern elephant seal, somewhat smaller than its southern relative, ranges … The photos and recordings in this article were made by researchers under permit number NMFS 19108.A Northern Elephant Seal known to researchers as KI8.Easily avoiding a fight can mean life or death for elephant seals.Researchers were able to get close to the elephant seals to record their calls.

A northern elephant seal hovers underwater over a rocky bottom along the coastline of Guadalupe Island. )After trying to ward off an intruder by blowing bubbles with their proboscises, the guards will roar loudly and swim toward the intruder trying to head him off by making physically threatening moves such as forward-lunging in the water and/or biting whatever body-part is in range. Even young males not yet ready to breed arrive at the colony to start learning its social network. 97 matches . Discover (and save!) Elephant seals migrate in search of food, spending months at sea and often diving deep to forage. This site is a compilation of my ongoing observations, research and many photographs of the Northern Elephant Seals that make the central coast of California home for certain parts of the year. An easily avoided fight can mean life or death for the seal.And knowing the ranks comes down to identifying, learning and remembering particular characteristics of individual calls, the French-American team of researchers found in its latest study.“At the very beginning of our elephant seal studies, we thought that males maybe sent information about their physical ability to fight,” said At Año Nuevo State Park in Pescadero, Calif., the researchers recorded calls from elephant seals up and down the hierarchy. Elephant Seal | World's Deadliest - YouTube Great White Shark Photo Shoot: Don't Try This at Home New research suggests that elephant seals use rhythm to recognize and respond to other members of their species in the wild.If you’re a beta Northern elephant seal and you hear a sound like the one in this short video, you might run.And here’s why: In the rhythm and pitch of the first call, you recognize one voice as a familiar, more dominant male that you’ve fought with before.

Display Preferences. The males start play-fighting each other when they're weaners. That's nothing like when two male elephant seals compete for their own spot in the sand.

more And you thought beach volleyball got competitive. Despite the stiff competition amongst males, the fights usually only last a few minutes and end with one of the males backing off. Oct 26, 2014 - This Pin was discovered by Michelle Darling.

Sign Up. If, however, the intruder gets by the guards, it'll be up to the alpha male to defend his territory.The defending male will employ a few different tactics to dissuade any interlopers.First, there's the raising of the head and the ensuing  ' look '.If that doesn't cause the intruder to back down, then the defending male will emit defeaning roars, known as threat-claps.If the challenger still doesn't back off, then the defending male will raise his huge torso and make a series of threatening forward lunges in the direction of the challenger.At that point, even though there may be several yards between them, the challenger often backs away and either moves further down the beach or has to run the gauntlet of getting by the guards patrolling the water. And you thought beach volleyball got competitive.

( Click any photo to enlarge ) Each year during the month of December, the alpha males at the top of the hierarchy usually establish themselves on ' their ' beach ', or, in the case of a large beach, on ' their section ' of that beach. Live Help . Elephant Seal Fight Stock Photos and Images. Losers become betas, connecting with females only opportunistically, when the alphas aren’t around and dominating other males that are even lower in the hierarchy.These voices are always the same, remaining stable year to year. Elephant seals are large, oceangoing earless seals in the genus Mirounga.The two species, the northern elephant seal (M. angustirostris) and the southern elephant seal (M. leonina), were both hunted to the brink of extinction by the end of the 19th century, but their numbers have since recovered.. The fights seem to largely take place on shore or in the shallows where they can use their back flippers to help rear up their enormous bodies to intimidating heights. 5:25. Winning males become alphas with a whole harem of females with which they can breed.

Sea elephants at San Luis Ovispo, california, panoramic view Then, fighting between males will take place for territorial rights, mating rights, and higher standing in the male hierarchy. The Unbelievable Beauty of South Australia in 2 Minutes Take a 4-Minute Escape to the Blissful Serenity of Antarctica ( Either way, the challenger will most likely be back a little later on to try his luck again. The Earth League International (formerly Elephant Action League) is a registered non-profit, tax-exempt charity under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Knowing the ranks of your male colony mates is important for survival, because bulls are big and powerful: They stretch up to 16 feet long, can weigh more than two tons and possess toothy mouths with four sharp canines.