A Little Education On Arctic Animals

I was thinking about Polaris and what kind of arctic animals there that we most likely will see. A few are obvious like Penguins and Polar Bears. But what about seals? Walruses? Even mammoths?! Then I realized that I don't know much about each animal species. So I decided to ask my best friend for information which was of course Google. While looking through all of those facts, some of them sounded so interesting. Then I realized, why not put them in a blog post? I tried not to put so many facts for each making this one long read. I chose the most interesting facts.

Penguins

There's no penguins in the Northern Hemisphere, so yes they don't exist in the North Pole.

Emperors stand almost 4 feet tall and the Little Blues are only 16 inches tall.

Their earliest penguin relatives lived 60 million years ago.

The Gentoos are the fastest, swimming up to 22 miles per hour.

Most penguins create nests for their eggs. But the Emperor is the only species that incubates their single egg on the top of their feet under a loose fold of skin to keep it warm.

Only humans prey on Polar Bears.

Even in a freezing environment, they overheat more than be cold.

Polar Bear cubs weight a little more than a pound at birth.

Polar Bears' skin is actually black.

Their fur might look white, but it's actually transparent.

They can smell seals, their main food source, from almost a mile away.

They can run up to 25 miles per hour and swim up to 6 miles per hour in water.

Males weighs up to 1500 pounds while females are usually half of that.

There are two groups of seals. There are 18 species of "True Seals" while there are 15 species of "Eared Seals."

The only difference between the two groups are their ears. True Seals do not have ear flaps while Eared Seals do.

Southern Elephant Seal is the largest, weighting up to 8,500 pounds while the smallest is the Ringed Seal at 110-150 pounds.

The Southern Elephant Seal is also the biggest in length, averaging at 20 feet long while the Ringed Seal averages at 5 feet.

Some seals live in the ocean, some seals make caves in the snow to live in and some stay under the ice creating holes to breathe through.

Seals mainly eat fish. But they also will eat eel, squid, octopus and lobster. Leopard Seals will eat penguins and smaller seals.

They are distantly related to dogs, coyotes, foxes, wolves, skunks, otters and bears.

Harp Seals can stay underwater up to 15 minutes.

Elephant Ears have "Smoker's Blood" which means they have the same amount of carbon monoxide in their blood like a person who smokes 40 or more cigarettes every day.

The Crabeater Seal has the largest population of any species of seal in the world. They think that there are 2 to 75 million Crabeaters.

The Grey Seal can eat up to 10 pounds of food in a day.

They're called the gentle giants of the Arctic because even when they're huge carnivores, they are really not aggressive.

They can weigh from 1,320 to 3,300 pounds, and grow up to 10 and half feet.

Males are twice as big as females with longer and thicker tusks and thicker skin.

Walrus tusks can grow up to 3 feet.

Tusks helps them to break through ice and helps them climb out of the water and onto the ice. They also use them to defend themselves and establish dominance.

Most Walruses live near the Arctic Circle, preferring areas with shallow water so they can easily find food.

On the average, they can swim around 4.35 miles per hour and run as fast as 21.74 miles per hour.

A group of walruses is called a herd.

Herds are segregated by gender. There's a herd for each gender.

Walruses can slow their heart rates which allow them to live in freezing temperatures.

Walruses love to eat shellfish. They can eat up to 4k clams in one feeding. If desperate, they will eat carcasses of dead seals.

Calves weigh around 100-165 pounds at birth.

Swimming right after being born, calves stay with its mother for the first three years of its life.

Walruses have two natural predators - the Orca aka "Killer Whale" and the Polar Bear. They say that both predators are more likely to hunt their calves than the adults.

Odobenus rosmarus, Walruses' scientific names, is Latin for "tooth-walking sea-horse."

Woolly Mammoths were not the only animal that was woolly. There were even Woolly Rhinos!

There were a dozen kinds of Mammoths other than the Woolly Mammoths. A few examples are the Steppe Mammoths, the Imperial Mammoths, and the Columbian Mammoths.

There were also three different smaller mammoth groups - Pygmy Mammoths of California, Dwarf Mammoths of Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia and Dwarf Mammoths of Saint Paul Island, Alaska.

The Woolly Mammoths weren't even the biggest Mammoth species. The Imperial Mammoths weighed over 10 tons. They say that also a few individuals of the Songhua River Mammoths were even bigger, at 15 tons!

The smaller dwarf mammoth races were on the average 5.6 feet tall and 1,680 pounds.

The Woolly Mammoths did not just have a thick coat of fur. They had 4 inches of solid fat under that fur to protect them from the freezing conditions.

The Woolly Mammoths' fur ranged from blonde to dark brown.

The last Woolly Mammoth was alive 4,000 years ago. That was at the same time when the pyramids already existed in Egypt. Imagine that!

A small group of Woolly Mammoths from Wrangel Island lived there until 1700 B.C.

Hope this was interesting to you like it was to me. I sure learned a bit today! Maybe when we walk through Polaris, when we will see new characters, we will get to be able to understand them more. For me, I just want cool pets and mounts. Some of the animals above sounds awesome. Especially that Woolly Rhino!