Spotted seals live in the sea, rarely go ashore, and only climb to islands or ice floes when breeding, breastfeeding and molting. Every spring, spotted seals breed on the floating ice in Liaodong Bay, Bohai Sea, China.
According to CCTV news reports, recently, spotted seals were photographed giving birth and nursing their cubs on the ice in Liaodong Bay. The baby seal is all white and snuggles up to her mother.
The spotted seal is about 10 month pregnant. Giving birth to and raising cubs is a hard process, and it will face the test of nature at any time.
0 1 spotted seal pregnant 10 months. In estrus, the male spotted seal will become very excited, swimming around the sea, chasing the female spotted seal. They chase each other, sometimes swim to the bottom, sometimes climb to the shore, and when they get to know each other, they will mate in deep water.
Pregnant female spotted seals live freely, fish and play in the sea. After 8- 10 months of pregnancy, before giving birth, spotted seals will find a safe sea ice floe. For safety reasons, they will dig an ice hole with their teeth and escape into the sea at any time.
After getting ready, the spotted seal lay on the ice floe and soon gave birth to a cub. The newborn cub, weighing about 5-6 kilograms, is all white and lying on the ice floe, so it can't be seen clearly from a distance, and the camouflage effect is very good.
The cub opened his ignorant big eyes, big black eyes, looked around curiously, and gave a cry of milk and milk. Instinctively crawling with forelimbs, moving the body and approaching the female spotted seal.
From the mother's body to the cold ice floes, the spotted seal cubs will face a huge temperature difference at birth. But its body hair has a good warm effect, which makes it adapt to the surrounding environment quickly.
The mother of the spotted seal warms her cub with her body, and she also lies on her side to feed the spotted seal. It is soft and lovely. From time to time, she looked up and looked around and crawled on the ice. In its eyes, everything around it is novel. I don't know that beauty always coexists with danger.
The mother of the spotted seal loves her cub very much, because the cub can't swim, so she stays on the ice floe for a long time, guarding the cub. When the baby is hungry, lie on his side and feed him.
Sometimes when the weather is bad and the sea breeze is howling, the female seal will stay on the ice floe, warm her cubs with her body and shelter them from the wind and rain until the bad weather passes.
However, the female spotted seal sometimes has to leave the small spotted seal and dive into the sea from the ice cave to fish. Whenever this happens, the cubs will crawl around on the ice, clumsily move their bodies with their forelimbs and keep barking, as if calling for their mother.
The mother of the spotted seal will come back soon, get up from the ice cave and comfort her restless cubs with cries.
The dangerous mother spotted seal will smash the floating ice with her body and let her cubs escape into the water. Ten days after birth, subcutaneous fat gradually formed, and she also began to change her hair style. When all the fetal hairs are replaced with short, thick, hard and spotted new hairs, you can go into the water.
The mother of the spotted seal will lead it out to sea for the first time and consciously train its cubs' swimming skills. After about 1 month of lactation, the cub weighs 20 kilograms. If he learns to hunt in seawater, he can live independently.
However, during this time, female spotted seals should be extra careful and always be alert to whether there is danger around them. If there is danger, the spotted seal cubs crawl slowly, unable to enter the ice cave and hide in the sea.
Mother spotted seal will use her "unique skill", jump hard, take off, let her body fall heavily on the ice floe and use her own gravity to break the ice floe. In this way, the spotted seal cubs can take the opportunity to escape into the water and use the seawater to avoid danger. It's really not easy for female spotted seals to feed their cubs!