Identifier: zoologica455019111912newy (find matches)
Title: Zoological Society bulletin
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: New York Zoological Society
Subjects: Zoology
Publisher: (New York) : New York Zoological Society
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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sh uses its tail, and the hinder portion of thebody is flexed from side to side. This move-ment makes their actions appear somewhatclumsy in the small Aquarium pool, especiallywhen contrasted with the extremely gracefulmovements of the fur seals, which appear to flythrough the water by means of the fore flippers.In the sea they must be powerful swimmers, forthey are stated by both Scammon and Townsendto frequent only the region of the roughestbreakers. On land they crawl with great dif-ficulty and our specimens never make use of theplatform in their pool as do all our other speciesof seals. They are able to mount the platformbut it seems to have no attractions for them andthey sleep as well as play and cat without leav-ing the water. The elephant seals arc the largest of all thePinnipedia, the adult males attaining a lengthof more than twenty feet. There is a markedsexual difference in size, as adult females at-tain a length of only ten or eleven feet. 762 ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN.
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THEIR DARK EYES SEEM TO SHINE WITH INTELLIGENCE. The California species was not described un-til 1866 (Gill, Proc. Essex Inst. V, 13 andPrpc. Chicago Acad. Sci. I, 33), and it is soclosely related to the southern elephant seal,(Macrorhinus leonina, Linnaeus), that it is re-garded by some as merely a variety. Amongthe other Pinnipedia the elephant seal is relatedmost nearly to the hooded seal (genus Cysto-phora). This is not the first time that the Californiaelephant seal has been kept in captivity. Town-send reports that in the year 1882 six youngspecimens were taken alive to San Francisco, buthe was not able to find out anything further con-cerning them. On May 20, 1883, five young of this species were received at the PhiladelphiaZoological Gardens, where they lived for ashort time, but aside from the fact that theycame from Lower California no other data isavailable. Since that time, however, none ap-pears to have been captured. In the Aquarium the young elephant sealshave from the

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