It looks like these animals fly through water. They are the seals and sea lions, and to help them fly through water, they have flippers instead of arms and legs. The flippers look like fins, or ‘wings’ and this is why seals, sea lions, and walruses are all called pinnipeds, which means ‘wing-footed’.

Pinnipeds have streamlined, cigar-shaped bodies that slip through the water easily. Strong muscles propel their bodies, and this helps to make these animals very good swimmers.

Some pinnipeds swim long distances, and some dive deep to find food. Some seals, gliding under the ice, can hold their breath for almost an hour.

Hunting styles:

Seals and most other pinnipeds have large eyes. Their eyes are adapted to low light. They see well deep in the ocean, which helps them to locate fish. They usually have no trouble catching all the smaller animals they can eat.

A much bigger problem for seals is to avoid predators. Seals are a favourite meal for killer whales, polar bears, and sharks. Polar bears wait for them to surface at breathing holes; killer whales know how to tip seals off ice floes and dump them into the water.

Favourite food:

The favourite foods of seals and sea lions are squid and medium-sized fish. They often spend their time swimming under huge blocks of ice searching for food. In the water, they swim with a speed and grace that is wonderful to watch — they almost seem to be flying. The fish they eat have fed on smaller fish, which in turn have fed on still smaller animals, but this does not put seals at the top of the food chain. Seals must watch out for sharks, polar bears, and killer whales.

Baby seals:

Seals and sea lions are mammals, which means they have lungs and must breathe air to stay alive. Their babies are born alive like human babies, and the babies get milk from their mothers.

Baby seals are called pups until they are about five months old, and then they are called yearlings. Sometimes the babies look nothing like their mothers. Harp seals, for example, are gray and black, but their babies look like fluffy white cotton balls.

Their home:

When people think of seals, they often think of snow and ice. Walruses, for example, live at the top of the world, where some have been seen sleeping peacefully in a strong wind at 31 degrees below zero. Seals live at both poles, and on the coasts of all islands and continents nearest the poles — and they can also be found on the edges of Hawaii, Florida, and Central America.

Sea lions are found in many of the same places seals are, but most sea lions stay away from the coldest areas, near the North and South poles.

At one time, about 100 years ago, it seemed certain that almost all of the seals, sea lions, and walruses in the world would be destroyed by human hunters. Millions of pinnipeds were boiled down to make oil for lamps, and were also hunted for their fur. Today, it appears that most species of pinnipeds are out of danger. Several things happened to accomplish this. First, there were so few pinnipeds left it became too expensive to hunt them. At the same time, electric lights were invented so that seal oil was no longer needed. And lastly, governments stepped in to regulate the protection of pinnipeds. Some species, such as northern fur seals, may now exist in numbers as great as before all the hunting began.