Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Carnivora > Phocidae > Mirounga > Mirounga leonina

Mirounga leonina (Southern Elephant Seal; southern sea elephant)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) is one of the two extant species of elephant seals. It is both the largest pinniped and member of the order Carnivora living today, as well as the largest Antarctic seal. The seal gets its name from its great size and the large proboscis of the adult males, which is used to make extraordinarily loud roaring noises, especially during the mating season. Rather larger at average than the male northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) (which is 40% lighter) and male walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) (the average North Pacific bull, of the larger race, is 2.5 times lighter), the adult bull southern elephant seal is without rival the largest carnivoran alive. An average adult male southern elephant seal weighs six to seven times more than the largest
View Wikipedia Record: Mirounga leonina

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
5
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
27
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 11.17
EDGE Score: 2.5

Attributes

Gestation [2]  7 months 10 days
Litter Size [2]  1
Litters / Year [2]  1
Maximum Longevity [4]  23 years
Migration [1]  Intercontinental
Nocturnal [1]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [4]  21 feet (634 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Pelagic, Coastal
Weaning [2]  21 days
Adult Weight [2]  1.543 tons (1,400.00 kg)
Birth Weight [2]  93.697 lbs (42.50 kg)
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [3]  40 %
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  60 %
Forages - Marine [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [2]  2 years 10 months
Male Maturity [2]  5 years

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
New Zealand New Zealand No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Homo sapiens (man)[6]
Hydrurga leptonyx (Leopard seal)[6]
Stercorarius antarcticus (Subantarctic Skua)[6]
Stercorarius maccormicki (South Polar Skua)[6]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
2de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
3Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
4Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
5CephBase - Cephalopod (Octopus, Squid, Cuttlefish and Nautilus) Database
6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
7Towards the trophic structure of the Bouvet Island marine ecosystem, U. Jacob, T. Brey, I. Fetzer, S. Kaehler, K. Mintenbeck, K. Dunton, K. Beyer, U. Struck , E.A. Pakhomov and W.E. Arntz, Polar Biology, 29 (2). pp. 106-113 (2006)
8Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
9Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
10Nunn, C. L., and S. Altizer. 2005. The Global Mammal Parasite Database: An Online Resource for Infectious Disease Records in Wild Primates. Evolutionary Anthroplogy 14:1-2.
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0