The Affectionate Walrus

Abstract

Many different species of very young seal and sea lion pups are extremely friendly to man after they overcome their initial fear upon being captured. Sometimes this will require a matter of days but in other species, such as a few-days-old Steller sea lion pup, they will have lost all sense of fear within the first fifteen minutes after their capture. ... the walrus which has been hunted by the Eskimos for many years is the most naturally affectionate of all marine mammals. They weigh about one hundred and twenty pounds at birth and show almost no fear of man even up to a year of age in the wild. Very young walrus can be easily trained to nurse a special formula from a bottle and they require about a gallon of formula per day. ... Whereas the Weddell seal pup may rest its head upon your knee, the walrus is not satisfied unless it can climb all over you even after he gets up to fifteen hundred pounds or more. It therefore soon becomes unsafe to get into a pool with them because of the danger of being drowned, and out of water one may be pinned down so as to require help to get up, particularly if there is more than one walrus. If anyone sits down where there are two or three young walrus being raised by hand, they will all try to climb upon you at the same time. In the case of most marine mammals if any object such as a hydrophone is placed in their pool they completely ignore it, but the walrus is there almost immediately and has it in his mouth or is playing with it in his flippers. It is therefore difficult to obtain underwater recordings of them unless the hydrophone is placed in some inaccessible place. Even placing dummy hydrophones in the tank for a week ahead of time helps very little if they see the new hydrophone go in. If one throws a half gallon nursing bottle half full of formula into their pool, they will occasionally pick it up in their flippers, lie on their back and nurse from the bottle while holding it up over them with their flippers. Their baby-like whimper and low-pitch woof! woof! and their apparent desire for physical contact with human beings make them one of the most attractive of the marine mammals.