Leopard+seal

Animal: Animal Group: Description of animal group ||  ||   ||   || True Mammals (Eutheria) Meat-eating Mammals [] || [] || Observation Describe your animal (Colour, size, body parts) ||  || [] || [] || Describe how your animal behaves (moves, flies, runs) ||  || [] ||
 * __**Classification**__
 * Source 1: || Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
 * Source 1: || Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
 * Source 1: || Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
 * Source 1: || Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
 * Source 1: || Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
 * Source 1: || Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
 * Source 1: || Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
 * Source 1: || Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
 * Source 2: ||  ||||||   || **COMMON NAME:**  || leopard seal  ||
 * **KINGDOM:** || Animalia  ||
 * **PHYLUM:** || Chordata  ||
 * **CLASS:** || Mammalia  ||
 * **ORDER:** || Pinnipedia  ||
 * **FAMILY:** || Phocidae  ||
 * **GENUS SPECIES:** || //Hydrurga leptonx//  ||   ||
 * __**Description**__
 * Source 1: || The coat is either dark gray above and paler underneath, or light gray above and below with conspicuous dark spots. The head is relatively narrow and elongated, and the body is long and supple. The teeth are specifically adapted to holding on to prey and tearing it to pieces. The teeth have three sharp cusps. These seals grow to over 13 feet and weigh about 850 pounds, with the males slightly smaller than the females.
 * Source 2: || Leopard seals have long, slender bodies and large heads and jaws. The shape of their heads is almost reptilian in appearance. They have large jaws with long and sharply pointed canine teeth, unlike those of most other seals. Males are about 2.8m long and generally weigh 300-600kg, while the females are a bit heavier, between 400-500kg and about 3.5m long.
 * **__Movement:__**
 * Source 1: || This is a solitary seal, and not very common. In winter, it undertakes long migratory journeys toward the shores of various Antarctic islands. The adults molt in February. It feeds on a large variety of food, but it prefers penguins. It pursues and kills these birds under the water. The penguin's body is then carried to the surface where it is slammed against the surface of the water and shaken with such violence that it may be dismembered.
 * Source 2: || The female Leopard Seals are larger than the males, who are also called bulls. The males are approximately 2.8 meters long and can weigh nearly 300 kg. The cows, the females, are around 3 meters long and weigh up to 370 kg! The Leopard Seal swims with the help of its hind limbs. The highly developed fore limbs offer good steering movement in the water.

[] || Where it lives ||  || [] || [] || What it eats How it eats ||  || The feeding behaviour of leopard seals is easily seen when their prey is penguin. Typically the seals chase or grab penguins in the water and thrash the captured bird back and forth until the skin peels away. The remaining carcass is then consumed. Leopard seals have very individual tastes. Some remain near penguin colonies and eat the penguins they catch there while others prefer to eat crabeater seal pups. Other leopard seals prefer a subantarctic menu and migrate north to Heard Island to feed on penguin and seal pups there. [] ||
 * **__Habitat:__**
 * Source 1: || These effective predators live in frigid Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters.
 * Source 2: || Leopard Seals (//Hydrurga leptonyx//) are solitary animals that inhabit pack-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent.
 * **__Feeding Habits:__**
 * Source 1: || Leopard seals eat almost anything. Their favourite food would be penguins but seals, fish, squid and crustaceans are also consumed. Seals eaten include seal pups of crabeater, Weddell and fur seals. One animal, captured near Sydney, contained a full grown platypus.
 * Source 2: || Penguins have good cause to fear the leopard seal, which is a solitary and fierce predator, equipped with powerful jaws and long, inward curving, pointed teeth. The seal will ÒpatrolÓ the edges of the ice, under the water, keeping an eye on the surface for penguins. Penguins often show a marked reluctance to be among the first of a group to enter the water in case there is a leopard seal lurking about.

If the seal spots a penguin, it will attack at great speed, hoping to take the penguin by surprise. It may have to give chase, and, with luck, the seal manages to grab its exhausted victim in its fiercesome jaws. The seal shakes the penguin vigorously to tear off portions of flesh.

Although penguins are the leopard sealÕs usual prey, about half their diet consists of krill (tiny shrimp-like animals). The sealÕs teeth are saw-like and very sharp, ideal for tearing off flesh - but also useful as a sieve when catching krill. Fish, squid and seabirds are also eaten on occasion. A few leopard seals sometimes eat other seals, usually the smaller crab seal. [] || How does it have babies? How does it care for its babies? How long do they live? ||  ||
 * **__Breeding Habits:__**
 * Source 1: || Leopard seal pups are born during the Antarctic summer, between November and January. The female hauls herself out onto the ice pack to give birth to her one pup. The females do not form colonies, unlike other seals. Before leaving the water, she eats much more food than usual, so she can survive the days following the birth without eating.

The new-born pup looks like a smaller version of its parents and does not have a white coat as the pups of other species do. It is 1.5 metres long and weighs about 26kg. The mother feeds her pup on milk rich in fat, which causes it to gain weight very quickly. At two or three weeks of age, the pup moults its first coat and takes to the sea. It now has to fend for itself and begins feeding on krill. Eventually it learns to catch fish and larger animals.

The mother seal mates with a bull seal when she returns to the sea, but the fertilised egg does not start developing straight away. This is called Ôdelayed implantationÕ and it will be three months before the egg becomes implanted in the femaleÕs uterus (womb). This ensures that the baby is not born until the weather has improved, the following summer - a gestation (pregnancy) of 240 days.

Female leopard seals are ready to breed when they are 2 - 6 years old. Males are ready at 3 - 7 years. [] || [] Leopard seals may live for 26 years or more. Their only known natural predator is the Killer Whale. [] || What does it do during the day and night? ||  || []
 * Source 2: || Leopard seals come on land only during the breeding season and then only in pairs or small groups. Females dig a hole in the ice early in the austral summer where they give birth to single pup after a 9 month gestation.
 * **__Activity:__**
 * Source 1: || Because they are solitary animals in a vast, isolated place, very little is known about them.



|| Their only significant predator is the killer whale. [] || How has it changed over time in Antarctica? ||  || But despite its natural advantages, the leopard seal faces an uncertain future. Supplies of one of the Southern Ocean's main food sources, krill, are in decline, with losses of up to 80 per cent in some areas in the past 30 years. Meanwhile a 6C rise in temperatures in the last half century has caused the disappearance of large areas of sea ice on which the seals breed.
 * Source 2: || ====**Behaviour** Leopard seals are solitary, typically only gathering in groups during the breeding season.====
 * **Adaptations:**
 * Source 1: || Around the ice floes of Antarctica, the leopard seal is king: top of the food chain, an efficient killer with no natural predators, untroubled even by man.

Scientists now estimate that between 18 and 35 per cent of species in some areas of the world will be on the road to extinction by the middle of the century. In the Antarctic, said Dr Rogers, leopard seals would be among the first to respond to large-scale environmental change, and were key to understanding ecosystem changes. [] ||
 * Source 2: || Because leopard seals eat whatever is available, scientists track their diets to help gauge changes in the food web caused by global warming. The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming places on Earth. By chemically analyzing a seal's whiskers, scientists can glean roughly three years of feeding patterns.

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 * **Threats:** ||  ||
 * Source 1: || The only natural predator of leopard seals is the killer whale, though an indirect observation of a male elephant seal having killed a leopard seal while ashore at Heard Island has been reported (an uncommon occurrence no doubt).
 * Source 2: || Although leopard seals have a ferocious reputation, they do not attack humans, unless provoked. They have been known to swim placidly with scientists who have been studying them. They are naturally inquisitive and this behaviour is seen as aggressive to some humans, and as a result they may be shot. The leopard seal population is estimated at around 500,000 individuals, and they are in no great danger at present. As with all marine life, pollution of the oceans may become a threat to their future.
 * **Other Facts:** ||  ||
 * Source 1: || Type: MammalDiet: CarnivoreAverage lifespan in the wild: 12 to 15 yearsSize: 10 to 11.5 ft (3 to 3.5 m)Weight: Up to 840 lbs (380 kg)Size relative to a 6-ft (2-m) man:[] ||
 * Source 2: || Leopard seals are earless seals, and also known as the sea leopards. They are solitary (live on their own), and inhabit Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions, but can sometimes be found as far north as South America, Australia and New Zealand. They are named for the spotty patterns on their fur. They are known as fierce hunters of prey.