A sea lion?
Yesterday I saw my friend Daniel Nicolas twitter; “there was a seal at the beach! yes i got pictures”. Â I knew once he published the photos I was going to link to them.
But then I got to thinking – did he really mean seal or did he mean sea lion?
Once he had the photos up I began doing a little digging to jog my memory about the differences between a seal and a sea lion, both of which are Pinnipeds, or “fin-footed mammals”. Â It is a pretty simple classification really. Â If you have a fin as a foot, you give birth to live young, feed your young with milk, are warm blooded, and have hair on your body – you’re a Pinniped. Â However, the main difference between a sea lion and a seal is that sea lions have ears and can walk on all fours.
But, you might be saying, but so can fur seals. Â This is where things start to get a little muddy. Â The number of species of seal are actually quite numerous. Â California sea lions, for example, are the most common species used in circuses and the like, but there are suborders of both seal and sea lion ranging in the hundreds. Â Australian, Japanese, Galapagos, and Stellar are just a few suborders of sea lion. Â New Zealand, Antarctic, Subantarctic, Northern Fur, and Cape Fur are just a few suborders of seals.
So what did Danny shoot? Â I’m sticking with sea lion – partially because of my close examination of the photos, and partially because I know that Danny is from somewhere near San Diego.
What do you think it is?
Source: Flickr: Photo uploads from May 20, 2008 by djloche.
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Wow, just looking at danny’s photo scares the shit out of me. I am so scared of these animals. LOL.
by the way, i think its a seal, or foca in Spanish.
I’m fairly certain it was a sea lion too, but probably a young one.
We do have both seals and sea lions in San Diego, which makes it more difficult, but I did get a good look at the overly friendly Pinniped and it was a sea lion