Sea lion

“ When driven, a sea-lion balances and swings its long and heavy neck, as a lever, to and fro, with every hitching up behind of its posterior limbs, which it seldom raises from the ground, drawing them up after the fore-feet with a sliding drag over the grass or sand and rocks, as the case may be, ever and anon pausing to take a sullen and savage survey of the field and the natives who are urging it. ”

“ Your sea-lion has no beauty to speak of; but he is an expert fisher and knows how to dry himself upon the rocks. When a hundred of them take to the water, with their black heads bobbing about, they might be taken for so many shipwrecked contrabands. How many ages were required for the ocean to quarry these grains of sand, which under a glass become cubes and pentagons as goodly as the stones of Venice? ”

“ A sea-lion that lived for a good many years in the London Zoo was exceedingly clever, for it would climb up and down a ladder, with either its head or its tail first, fire off a gun, kiss its keeper, and catch fishes in its mouth if they were thrown to it, just as a dog will catch a piece of biscuit. ”

“ I never saw one doing so, but we do not see everything that happens in the world. The sea-lion, with its stouter limbs, can lift its forepart, raise its head and look about it, and even flop about the ice-fields at a respectable rate. ”

“ The natives, however, always carefully pluck them out of the Eumetopias, and get their full value in exchange.
The sea-lion also, as in the case of the fur-seal, is a fish-eater, pure and simple, though he, like the latter, occasionally varies his diet by consuming a limited amount of juicy sea-weed fronds, and tender marine crustaceans; but he hunts no animal whatever for food, nor does he ever molest, up here, the sea-fowl that incessantly hover over his head, or sit in flocks without any fear on the surface of the waters around him. ”

“ That noteworthy, intelligent courage of a fur-seal, though it does not possess half the size nor one-quarter of the muscular strength of a sea-lion, is entirely wanting in the huge bulk and brain of the Eumetopias. A boy with a rattle or a pop-gun could stampede ten thousand sea-lion bulls in the height of a breeding-season to the water, and keep them there for the rest of the time. ”

“ Occasionally a sea-lion, hungry or bored by his companions, threw himself with a splash into the wave, and it was interesting to watch the rapidity and actual grace of his movements in the sea compared with his laborious efforts on the land. ”

“ The sea-lion, having a head with pointed ears, "looking like the head of a dog with his ears cut off," large eyes, whiskers, a long neck, and a body raised upon its hind and fore limbs several inches from the ground, appears upon the land more like a land animal, while it is fully as much at home in the water as the seal. It is much more at home on the land, where its whole body is singularly lithe and flexible, and it can run nearly as fast as a man can, and get along better in a thick bush, can climb rocky ledges and steep, slippery banks. ”

“ As quickly as possible the captured sea-lion is stuffed into a strong box or cage, and here, in a cell too narrow to permit movement, it roars and yelps in helpless fury, until it is transported to its tank. ”

“ But sea-lions are rather expensive pets to keep, for they have such very large appetites. A single sea-lion will eat about twenty-five pounds of fish in a single day! And when one remembers that these seals are sometimes found in herds of hundreds of thousands, one would almost think that they must very soon devour all the fishes in the sea.
When fully grown the male of the largest species of sea-lion is often ten feet long and weighs a thousand pounds. ”

“ The sea-lions are much more powerful animals than the fur-seals. The male of Steller's sea-lion attains a length of 10 feet and a weight of 1,000 lbs. The Australian Sea-lion is even larger than that of the North Pacific. ”

“ Until relatively recent times the sea lion was an important source of food to the Indians living along the ocean coast. The bones of sea lions are often the most numerous vertebrate remains in shell mounds. ”

“ The sea-lion, as I have said, is not like a lion; the sea-leopard is not like a leopard; but the sea-elephant, which is another sort of seal, and a large one, may possibly be considered sufficiently like an elephant to have been evolved, in the centuries, from an elephant who has had the ill-luck to fall into the sea. He hasn't much of a trunk left, but he often finds himself in seas of a coldness enough to nip off any ordinary trunk ”

“ The male sea lion, of eleven or twelve feet in length and a thousand pounds in weight, is yellowish-brown in color with shaded darker patches. There is a distinct mane upon the [207] neck, which, with its upright posture, combines to give the creature its supposed leonine appearance. The males are fierce in aspect, and if hard pressed will turn and show fight. Old animals bellow like bulls; the younger ones bleat like sheep. They bolt their fish without mastication. The female is only about half the dimensions of the male, and is considerably lighter in color. ”

“ The remainder of the tawny body is covered with short smooth hairs or bristles. The sea-lioness, who is much smaller than her mate, has no mane; and as she is of a darker color and has a differently shaped head, is frequently mistaken for another species, and called wolf, or lobo, by the inhabitants of the south-western coast of America. The fore flippers of the sea-lion have the appearance of large pieces of black tough leather, showing, instead of nails, slight horny elevations ”

“ Lizzie really is a sea-lion, though it is easier for me to call her a seal, since nine out of ten persons do so. Few know the difference between a seal and a sea-lion. The latter, of which Lizzie is a specimen, have flat front flippers, without hair and triangular in shape. They use their flippers almost as well as we do our hands, and you can see what an aid they are in swimming. The sea-lions have long necks, and carry their heads well up. ”

“ And yet we are more encouraged to think that the whale owed his death to other causes than the overland transportation, because the sea lion does so well, and the fishes in the aquaria appear to be so hearty and contented. ”

“ Sea-lions are not the least little bit like real lions, but when sailors heard them roaring on the rocks far out to sea they thought they must be lions, and so they gained the name. There are several of them at the Zoo, huge clumsy looking creatures with big whiskers, and a skin like india-rubber. At one end of their pond is a mass of artificial rock with caves and terraces, and when the sea-lions are out of the water they gallop about on this in an astonishing way, considering that they have no legs, and only end in a fish's tail. ”

“ Back on the ship, looking at the lion couchant while the twilight falls and the lights come out along its base. There is no harshness now. The lion's skin has become velvet—it is a veritable lion asleep among fireflies. We lift anchor and steam slowly into the Mediterranean. The lion loses its form, becomes a dark wedge, the thin edge toward Spain. Night [Pg 56] deepens as we creep farther around; the wedge shortens, contracts to a cone, a pyramid—the level sea changes to a desert. ”

“ It is much addicted to roaring, which, as much as the mane of the old males, has obtained for it the name of the Sea Lion. The old males have a fierce appearance, yet they fly in great haste on the approach of man, but if driven to extremities they will fight desperately; but in captivity they are capable of being tamed, and become very familiar with man. ”

“ A lot of our young men, being thus set at liberty, have gone over to Northeast to begin a sea-lion drive on their own account. The skins are valuable for making boats, you know, while the flesh is esteemed much more highly than that of a seal. ”

“ He is not sleek and graceful like his smaller cousin, but has an enormously thick neck and heavy shoulders. His voice is a roar rather than a bark. The head of an old Sea Lion is so much like that of a true Lion that the name Sea Lion has been given this family. ”

“ As the sea-lion is without fur, its skin has little or no commercial value. [140] The hair is short, an inch to an inch and a half in [Pg 360] length, being longest over the nape of the neck; straight, and somewhat coarse, varying in color as the season comes and goes. For instance, when the Eumetopias makes its first appearance in the spring and dries out after landing, it has then a light-brownish rufous tint, with darker shades back and under the fore flippers and on the abdomen. ”

“ The lion is effectively protected by his mane from the bite of a rival, and the same protective arrangement occurs in quite a different family of mammals—in an eared seal, which is called the 'sea-lion' for this very reason. ”

“ They are exceedingly timid and wary at all times, and in this manner and method they are diametrically opposed, not by shape alone, but by habit and disposition, to the fashion of the fur-seal in especial, and the sea-lion. Their skin is of little value, comparatively, but their chief merit, according to the natives, is the relative greater juiciness and sweetness of their flesh, over even the best steaks of sea-lion or fur-seal pup meat. ”

“ The Sea-Lion, or Maned Seal, is an animal of gigantic size, measuring from fifteen to twenty feet in length, or even more; it is of a dull tawny color, and the neck of the male is covered with a sort of mane, composed of hair considerably longer and more crisp than that which covers the rest of the body. These formidable creatures are extensively distributed along the coasts of the Pacific ocean, more especially in the vicinity of the Straits of Magellan, and the neighboring 84islands. ”

“ Their toes are united by a membrane, which does not reach to their extremity, and each of them are terminated by a claw. The sea-lion differs from the common seal not only in its size and bulk, but also by other characters. The male has a kind of thick crest, or trunk, hanging from the end of its upper jaw, about five or six inches long. This character is not seen in the females, and forms a very striking distinction between them. The [72] strong males collect together a flock of females, and permit no other male to approach them. These animals are truly amphibious ”

“ The best time to see them is when they are fed, which is after the real lions. The keeper goes into the enclosure with a basket of fish, and in their excitement the sea-lions writhe and wind and chase each other till the pond seems full of gigantic eels. He throws the fish one by one in all directions, and the great beasts simply dance after them. ”

“ A swarm of sea-parrots fly out from its rocky bluffs on the south shore, stirred into unwonted activity and curiosity by the near approach of our vessel, while a dozing herd of sea-lions suspiciously stretch their long necks into the air, smell us, then simultaneously and precipitately plump themselves into the foaming breakers just below their basking-place above the surf-wash. ”

“ It has plenty of wood and water, and abundance of wild goats.
There are such numbers of great sea-lions and other seals of various sorts, all having excellent furs, in every bay, that we could hardly walk about along shore for them, as they lay about in flocks like sheep, their young ones bleating for their dams like so many lambs. Some of these sea-lions are as big in the body as an English ox, and they roar like lions. They are covered with short hair of a light colour, which is still lighter on the young ones. ”

“ The sea-bears are not so large, by far, as the lions, but rather larger than a common seal. They have none of that long hair which distinguishes the lion. Theirs is all of an equal length, and finer than that of the lion, something like an otter's, and the general colour is that of an iron-grey. This is the kind which the French call sea-wolfs, and the English seals; they are, however, different from the seals we have in Europe and North America. The lions may, too, without any great impropriety, be called over-grown seals; for they are all of the same species. ”

“ Like the fur-seal, the sea-lion never notices its wounds to nurse and lick them, as dogs do, or other carnivora; it never pays the slightest attention to them, no matter how grievously it may be injured.
[139] Often when the fur-seal and sea-lion bulls haul up in the beginning of the season examples among them which are inordinately fat will be seen; their extra avoirdupois renders them very conspicuous, even among large gatherings of their kind ”

“ Sea-lions are near relatives of the fur seals and have a nearly similar distribution, both in far southern and northern seas. The males of the several species are more than twice the size of the females and are characterized by an enormous development of neck and shoulders. ”

“ I suppose they live partly on fish and partly on grass, for they come on shore by means of their fore paws, dragging their hind parts after them, and bask themselves in the sun in great numbers. They cut near a foot deep of fat, and we killed a good many of them for the sake of their oil, which is of good quality, but they are difficult to kill. Both sea-lions and seals were so numerous on the shore, that we had to drive them away before we could land, and they were so numerous as is hardly credible, making a most prodigious noise. ”