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Leopard Seal — printable fact sheet
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Leopard Seal
Hydrurga leptonyx
Hydrurga leptonyx is the only seal that habitually eats warm-blooded prey, and its skull shows it: a huge gape, a long reptilian head and canines up to 2.5 cm. But the same jaw contains one of the most elegant compromises in mammal dentition. The post-canine teeth are elaboratel…
Did you know?
- Leopard seals can open their jaws almost 160 degrees, allowing them to capture large and agile prey with ease.
- Leopard seal songs are individually distinctive and rigidly patterned, and each male sings the same sequence night after night, more like a bird's song than a mammal's call. The teeth that let them strain krill are shared with the crabeater seal, whose own teeth are so specialised for krill that the two species' filter systems evolved along parallel lines. In 2006 a leopard seal repeatedly presented live and dead penguins to National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen, apparently trying to feed him, in one of the strangest interspecies encounters ever filmed.
What I learned
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