This little sleeping harbor seal shows that there are all sorts of differences between a seal and a sea lion. The most obvious is the lack of ears on seals and prominent if small ears on sea lions. However, if you have ever watched trained sea lions, you will note that they still have fairly good use of their "feet", can walk, can stand on all four or two at a time (typically the front two). Seals have flippers. The back flippers on a seal go straight back and act as rudders (as with a fishes tail) as opposed to the back feet on a sea lion that come out at right angles as you would expect from a land animal. The front flippers on a seal are similarly streamlined while a sea lion's front flippers also still resemble feet. As you would expect, sea lions are far more mobile on land than a seal and hence spend more time on land. From an evolutionary standpoint, sea lions appear to be a little closer to their land loving ancestors than seals are.
No comments:
Post a Comment