A seal of the eastern and central North Pacific. It dives to feed and comes ashore to breed and molt.
Mature males are larger than females and develop a large inflatable nose. Females retain smaller noses.
During the breeding season, northern elephant seal mothers and pups gather in dense colonies. Mothers nurse while fasting for about 25 days. In a playback experiment at Año Nuevo State Park in California, researchers played 22 mothers recordings of calls from their own pup and from an unfamiliar pup of similar age. Mothers responded more strongly to their own pup’s voice in the early, middle, and late stages of lactation. A separate test also found a stronger response to their own pup’s calls in mothers just one to two days after giving birth. Researchers compared responses such as how quickly a mother looked toward or moved toward the speaker and how she vocalized.
Mothers differed in the strength and consistency of their responses. Response strength was not related to pup weaning mass, but pups of mothers with more consistent responses across lactation were heavier when weaned. Mothers can distinguish their pup’s voice even in a crowded colony.
IUCN Red List · Least Concern (LC) · Global
The global IUCN assessment completed in 2014 and published in 2015 classified the northern elephant seal as Least Concern (LC). It estimated about 110,000 mature individuals and expected the population and range to keep growing after recovery from near-extinction following historic hunting.