A Closer Look at … a Weddell Seal’s Body
This journal is brought to you by:
- Mrs. Hughes and her 2nd grade CLUE students at Campus School
- Amy George and her 2nd grade CLUE students at Grahamwood Elementary
They wanted to take a 'Closer Look' at the Weddell seal body!
They are ‘Ginormous’!
I think I've just coined a new word - combining giant and enormous – but the most stunning thing about their bodies is their size!
Let’s take a closer look at their amazing bodies!
Body Shape
A Weddell seal has a sleek, streamlined, fusiform body shape. A fusiform body is a common body shape of many aquatic animals such as seals, whales, sharks and fish. The shape is characterized by being round or compressed at the main part of the body and tapered at both the head and tail. A Weddell seal’s body is made for moving quickly through the water. In fact, if you wanted to design a shape that would move through water with the least drag, or resistance, it would look a lot like a Weddell seal.
Head & Neck
The most obvious things on a Weddell seal’s head are its huge eyes! Also visible are the nose, whiskers, and ears – all of which are important sensory organs. Can you find this seal’s ears? Look closely, and you’ll notice a tiny little hole where you might expect to see a flap like we have, or a floppy or pointy ear like some other mammals have. Did you find it? True seals, like the Weddell, don’t have a significant external part of their ear – it’s all inside.
Looking at the photo above, you might wonder if seals have necks - since you don’t see an indentation like we have to define our neckline. But Weddell seals actually do have a neck, we just don’t see it from the outside. Take a look at this seal neck X-ray to find the neck vertebrae. How similar is it to the bones in a human neck?
Hind End
When you look at the hind end of an animal, what do you expect to see? – A tail, right? But, looking at the hind end of a Weddell seal, it’s not that easy to find one. Weddells do have tails, but they are very short, broad and flat –a bit difficult to see. The last and most obvious feature in this region of the body are the hind flippers. These flippers are larger than the fore flippers, and check out the claws – they are not at the tip of the flipper, like our nails.
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