Cute Baikal Seal Nerpa Funeral

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The nerpa or Baikal seal, is a species of mammal pinniped of the family of phocids. It is a seal endemic of Lake Baikal. The nerpa are the only species of seals that spend their entire lives in freshwater. They are the longest (up to 56 years in females) and also smaller seals pinnipeds. The length of the specimens varies between 130 to 140 centimeters with an average weight of 70 kg.

The skin is of one color whose tones ranging from white to black, the upper part of a dark gray and light gray lower tone. The Nerpa lives submerged much of the time in the water thanks to its abundant blood and the high degree of oxygenation of the highest waters of Baikal, thus can be kept immersed up to 70 minutes. In the long winter when the lake surface freezes, these animals are trained to make holes in the ice.

Angara, and Lake Baikal was then almost an arm in the southeast corner of the great Siberian paleolake. That is, the shell of ice during the last ice would first covered the entire Arctic Ocean southward pushing some populations of seals, they could thrive in a large Siberian paleolake and then to stop the glacial transgression some seal populations (the nerpas) were remaining in the Baikal.

The Baikal seal is a small seal species. Are given about 140 cm body length and a weight of 80 to 90 kg, extreme values ​​are 110-165 centimeters in length and between 50 and 130 Kilogramm. The dense fur is solid dark colored silver gray on top and light gray on the bottom, the unspotted, rarely obscurely spotted coat is an essential characteristic of the species. The individual hairs are at the base colored black with gray top, so the animals act in the wet and dark.

Male seals and not reproducing animals do not go on the ice sheet, but remain in the water. Place to catch your breath at breathing holes, which keep them free of ice. Individual animals can be a main hole and up to ten side holes create and entertain. Adult animals use the entire lake. They join to shedding at the time of ice melting into larger groups of up to 1,300 animals on the residual ice together. The rest of the year they live and hunt alone.

The food of the Baikal seals consists exclusively of fish, among the 29 known species used mainly from Baikal fish oil and Baikal bullheads. To capture this, the seals dive usually 10 to 50, in extreme cases, up to 300 m deep. The dives usually last 2 to 4 minutes, in extreme cases, to 40 minutes. The Baikal seal is endemic to Lake Baikal. Only sometimes migrate individual animals in the lake hinfließenden watercourses, but never stay long there. Very old data for the north-east lies Oronsee, presumably on the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller go back, are no longer explicable. Either the species is extinct there, or there is a false statement before. Although other seals occur in fresh water, the Baikal seal is the only species that lives exclusively in freshwater.

The Baikal seal is said to have reached even the late 19th century population sizes on the order of one million animals. By excessive hunting is her stock in the late 1980s to 46,800 reproducing females. Baikal seals are known as top predators in a large extent by environmental toxins such as polychlorinated biphenyls. As the only zoo in Europe Leipzig Zoo held until 2013 a female Baikal seal. More conversations are currently only Russia and especially from Japan known. In Japan, the attitude of Baikal seals is quite common. In April 2006, succeeded in Niigata Aquarium, the world's first successful breeding of a Baikal seal.

Adult males have an average of ten holes. In summer, seals keep themselves in the southern part of the lake. When the sun shines, the seals sunning themselves on small rocky islands.

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