Grey seal
Halichoerus grypus
— Where the name comes from
Halichoerus is Greek and joins háls, “sea”, and choîros, “pig”: the sea pig, for the long muzzle and stocky shape. Grypós means “hooked, curved”, and describes the profile of the adult male’s nose, which with age lengthens until it looks like a horse’s. The English grey seal settles for the colour.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Carnivores
- Habitat
- Rocky coasts, islands, sandbanks exposed at low tide
- Range
- The North Atlantic: the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Baltic, eastern Canada
- Size
- 195–230 cm for the male, 165–195 for the female; 150–310 kg
- Diet
- Carnivore — bottom fish, cephalopods, occasionally harbour seals
- Lifespan
- 25–35 years, up to 46 in females
— Characteristics
- 01
The profile of the muzzle, straight with no forehead step, tells it at once from the harbour seal.
- 02
The pups are born with a white woolly coat which they lose in three weeks.
- 03
The female gives milk that is sixty per cent fat: the pup trebles its weight in twenty days.
— What sets it apart
Some adults have learnt to prey on other seals — harbour seals and even their own species — and for years the mutilated carcasses found on North Sea coasts were put down to ships’ propellers. Only in 2014 did camera traps show the truth: it was a grey seal. This is not a behaviour of the species but of individuals who learnt it and repeated it. It takes only a few animals to rewrite entirely what we thought we knew about a population studied for a century.
