Baikal seal: photo with description, habitat and lifestyle. Nerpa - mammal of Baikal Nepra animal

Nerpa is freshwater species seals and lives only on Lake Baikal. It is also considered a symbol of Baikal along with the local omul. Her images can be seen on many souvenirs and emblems of Irkutsk. Appearance The seal attracts many foreign tourists.

Characteristic

seals in wildlife can live up to 55 years. Their growth stops at the 19th year of life, but their weight can increase and decrease throughout their lives. Animal parameters:

• an adult Baikal seal has a body length of 165 centimeters;
• weight fluctuates around 50-130 kilograms;
• The average life expectancy is 55 years.

The usual speed of underwater movement does not exceed 8 km/h. In case of hunting and threat, it can increase the pace. On land, Baikal seals move rather slowly with the help of their tail and flippers; when they sense danger, they begin to move in leaps and starts, pushing off the ground.

Baikal seals do not dive to great depths, but, as local fishermen say, they were caught with nets at a depth of about 200 m. INC SB RAS - the abbreviation translates as Baikal Limnological Museum - reports that seals can dive to depths of up to 300 m.

Apparently, animals do not need to dive to a significant depth, because they mainly obtain food in illuminated areas, and this does not exceed 30 meters in depth. On average, a seal can swim underwater for more than an hour, which is enough time for it to escape from its pursuer or find food. The Baikal seal can dive into water up to 200 m and withstand pressure of 21 atmospheres without harm.

This type of seal is distributed only on Lake Baikal, mainly in the middle and northern zone of the lake. A massive accumulation of seals can be seen in June on the land of the Ushkany Islands; such islands are most suitable for their natural habitat. As soon as sunset comes, Baikal seals large quantities begin to sail to the islands. If a ship with the engine turned off is floating next to the animals, the seals will definitely show their curiosity and can swim as close as possible to the water transport, periodically emerging from the water and observing the situation.

Interesting fact! This species of seal can only be seen on Lake Baikal; it is not found anywhere else. You can watch these animals endlessly, which is what visiting tourists do on the Ushkany Islands.

From an evolutionary point of view

The Baikal seal is included in the modern classification of true seals. The well-known professor of pinnipeds, K. K. Chapsky, states: the seal descended from its ancestor ringed seal. The ancestral form of the animals is late, unlike the Caspian seal.

Seal food

The Baikal seal mainly eats non-commercial fish: Baikal goby and golomyanka. In a completed cycle, a seal can eat about a ton of fish. Sometimes seals feed on local omul, but it makes up approximately 2% of the total diet.

How seals reproduce

Gestation period of Baikal seals 11 months pass. At the beginning of several months, embryonic diapause continues. Sexual maturity occurs in the 4th year of life, and from 4 to 7 years of age they can bear offspring. In males, puberty begins a little later, at the age of 6 years.

After 40 years, females stop giving birth, but throughout their lives they are capable of giving birth to about 20 cubs, possibly more if there are favorable living conditions. Females can whelp every year. But about 10-20% of females become infertile every year for various reasons, although the duration of this period does not exceed several months, the end of February and until the first half of April.

Young animals

Females, from February to March, prepare a snow shelter, where they give birth to cubs; usually one individual is born, sometimes two. The weight of the cub is 4 kilograms, and the color of the newborn is white, they are also called squirrels . About the cubs:

1. On average, the duration of a small seal's stay in the den is 5 weeks; it does not leave this place and feeds only on its mother's milk. The cub manages to molt before the shelter is destroyed; before that, when it feeds on its mother’s milk, it does not climb into the water.
2. The female can leave the small seal only when she goes after prey; the rest of the time she does not leave her den. When the outside frost is -20, the temperature inside the snow room varies within 5 degrees Celsius.
3. After 60-75 days, the lactation period ends. Lactation can last up to 105 days, but this happens quite rarely, it all depends on the ice cover. Before independent fishing, the young animals completely molt, their fur changes from white to gray-silver color, this period passes gradually until 3 months of age. In older Baikal seals, the color changes to brownish-brown.

Winter life of seals

On the hummocky territory of Lake Baikal seals spend the winter on the ice in snow-covered lairs, also prefer to live between piled up pieces of ice that form canopies. In the process of ice formation, animals on the ice of the lake make the main product with a cross-section of 150 cm on average, they continue to preserve it in in the right condition and remove growing ice.

When they come very coldy and Baikal completely freezes, the animal breathes under the snow only with the help of secondary vents, it makes them by raking the base of the ice, using the claws of the forelimbs. The seal provides its home with a dozen vents, which are located along the perimeter of the den and extend for tens of meters, and even hundreds. The shape of the outlet is round, the diameter is no more than 15 cm, this hole is enough for the seal to stick its nose above the surface of the water. The base of the duct is narrowed and resembles an inverted funnel.

The peculiarity of constructing vents- This is the innate instinct of seals. Just for fun, an experiment was carried out in an aquarium. A sheet of foam plastic 5 cm thick was laid on the water. The rest of the water space was free. Young seals at the age of 1-2 months began to make special holes on the floating platform - vents through which they breathed, placing their noses there. Despite the fact that there was open water, they swam up from below and saturated themselves with air, then dived back into the depths.

These experimental pups were caught at about a couple of weeks of age, when they were fed on their mother's milk. They had to be fed condensed milk using a baby bottle with a nipple. This means that before the experiment there was no immersion in water, but when they grew up a little, on their first swim they proved that making vents is indeed an innate ability.

Sleep and the ecological chain of the Baikal seal

In a dream, the seal does not move and sleeps directly in the water for quite a long time. It remains in this state until the oxygen in the blood runs out. It often happens that scuba divers swim close to the seal and touch it, even turn the animal over, but despite this, the Baikal seal continues to sleep.

In the environment of the ecological chain, the animal takes first place and only humans can pose a threat.

How the seal appeared on Lake Baikal

Scientists do not agree on how the animal could have gotten to Baikal. But many researchers prefer the version of I.D. Chersky. He states that this type of seal settled on the lake in glacial period , swimming with omul through the network of the Angara and Yenisei rivers. Other researchers say that the seal entered along the Lena River, and there was also flow from the lake, but the information remains just an assumption.

How the seal was characterized in the old days

The first explorers made the first mention of the animal; they came to this area in the first half of the 17th century. During the work of the second Great Northern, or Kamchatka expedition, the first scientific mention was made; the organization was led by V. Bering. The expedition included a group of researchers led by I. G. Gmelin.

This detachment studied the nature of Lake Baikal in a diverse direction, as well as its surroundings, at that moment a seal called a nerpa was spotted.

As the people living here say, a couple of centuries ago it was possible to see a seal on Baunt Lakes. She could only get there through the Vitim and Lena rivers. But some naturalists believe that Baikal seal this lake penetrated through Baikal itself, which was previously interconnected with the Bauntovsky lakes. But true sources of information for both versions could not be found.

Number of seals

The count was carried out by the Limnological Siberian Institute, which is a branch of the Academy of Sciences Russian Federation. Today the number of Baikal seals is approximately 100,000 individuals. Counting is done by many methods, but the most effective is airborne observation; the plane moves along certain routes. People working as census takers inspect the territory through a porthole, in the process they notice the den and make marks on the map, but most often aerial photographs of the areas are collected, then a count of the seals’ refuges is carried out. There are 3 ways to count:

1. The number of observed lairs per unit area is multiplied by the entire territory of Baikal.
2. In the second method, one hundred plots with the following parameters are distributed to accountants: 1500*1500 m each plot. The crawl is carried out on foot or on a snow bike, and all shelters seen are marked and recorded. Next, individuals are also counted for the entire water area of ​​Lake Baikal.
3. The last method is the route method. Counters on motorcycles ride along a given route across the lake, their distance between them is selected to such an extent that it is possible to notice all the lairs that come their way.

But the most accurate method is counting by squares; this is the method used in Lately. An employee of the local institute, V.D. Pastukhov, determined the oldest age of the seals. Life expectancy: 52 years for males and 56 years for females.

Interesting fact! At the end of the 20th century, there was a mass death of Baikal seals due to a disease - the canine distemper virus, which affects most domestic and wild animals. During this period, 1,500 seals died.

Fishing and hunting activities

Valuable fur of the Baikal seal- This is the main industry. Local residents use meat, fat and internal organs. Sometimes the local population engages in fishing for food purposes. Catching begins in April until the moment when it is still possible to move on the ice. Hunting is also carried out with the help of nets, such hunting is more humane and losses during catching become less than during shooting, because the Baikal seal may be wounded and will not be able to live long. Approximately 6,000 individuals are caught each year.

Poachers, despite legal hunting, continue to exterminate cubs after the very first molt. Predominantly, hunting is carried out on small young animals - this is strictly prohibited by law. Even despite this, Baikal seals have not become a species listed in the Red Book; there is only a note in the list that special attention must be paid to the animals, as well as to their condition in the wild.

Interesting fact! From 1895 to 1897 seal lard was used in medicinal purposes for gold mine workers. This Baikal seal fat is considered medicinal, so they say local residents, he has medicinal properties and is used for stomach and lung diseases.

Baikal is the deepest and most uniquely beautiful lake in the world. It is there that you can meet unique animals that are not found anywhere else - Baikal animals, endemics, relics of the tertiary fauna.

Baikal seal belongs to the seal family and forms a separate species. This is the only mammal on Lake Baikal. This wonderful animal was first heard and described during the Bering expedition.

The team included various scientists, including those who were directly involved in studying the nature of the Baikal region. It was from them that the first detailed seal descriptions.

The pinniped is a rather unique phenomenon on Lake Baikal. After all, it is common to think that seals are indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic and Antarctic. How did it happen that these animals ended up in Eastern Siberia still remains a mystery to everyone.

Pictured is a Baikal seal

But the fact remains a fact, and this phenomenon makes Lake Baikal even more mysterious and unusual. On photo of the Baikal seal you can watch endlessly. Her impressive size and some kind of childish expression on her face seem slightly incompatible.

Features and habitat of the Baikal seal

This is a fairly large animal, almost human height 1.65 cm, and weighing from 50 to 130 kg. The animal is covered everywhere with thick and hard hairline. It is not there only in the eyes and nostrils. It is even found on the animal's flippers. Seal fur mostly gray or gray-brown in color with a beautiful silver tint. Most often, the lower part of her body is lighter than the upper part.

seal animal swims without problems thanks to the membranes on her fingers. Strong claws are clearly visible on the front paws. They are slightly smaller on the hind legs. The seal has practically no neck.

Females are always slightly larger than males. The eyes of the seal have a third eyelid. After being in the air for a long time, her eyes begin to water involuntarily. There is simply a huge amount of fat deposits in the animal’s body.

The seal's fat layer is about 10-15 cm. The least amount of fat is in the area of ​​the head and front paws. Fat helps the animal not to freeze in cold water. Also, with the help of this fat, it is easy for the seal to survive difficult periods of lack of food. Subcutaneous Baikal seal fat helps her lie on the surface of the water for a long time.

The Baikal seal sleeps very soundly

She can even sleep in this position. Their sleep is enviably very sound. There have been cases when scuba divers turned over these sleeping animals, and they did not even wake up Baikal seal nerpa lives exclusively on Lake Baikal.

There are, however, exceptions and seals end up in the Angara. IN winter time year, they spend almost all their time in the underwater kingdom of the lake and only in in rare cases may appear on its surface.

In order to have enough oxygen under water, seals use their sharp claws to make small holes in the ice. The usual dimensions of such holes are from 40 to 50 cm. The deeper the funnel, the wider it is.

Baikal seal underwater

End winter period for this pinniped animal it is characterized by going out onto the ice. At first summer month There is a huge concentration of these animals in the area of ​​the coast of the Ushkany Islands.

This is where the real seal rookery is located. As soon as the sun sets in the sky, these animals begin to move together towards the islands. After the ice floes disappear from the lake, seals try to stay closer to the coastal zone.

Character and lifestyle of the Baikal seal

An interesting thing about the seal is that while it is under water, its nostrils and holes in its ears are closed with a special valve. When the animal surfaces and exhales air, pressure occurs and the valves open.

The animal has excellent hearing, perfect vision and an excellent sense of smell. The speed of movement of seals in water reaches approximately 25 km/h. After the ice breaks up on Lake Baikal, which occurs in March-May, the seal begins to molt. At this time, the animal is starving and does not need water. The seal does not eat anything at this time; it has enough fat reserves to survive.

This is a very energetic, curious, but at the same time cautious animal. It can watch a person from the water for a long time, immersing itself completely in it and leaving only its head on the surface. As soon as the seal realizes that it has been spotted from its observation post, it immediately, without the slightest splash or unnecessary noise, quietly plunges under the water.

This animal is easy to train. They literally become the crowd's favorites. There is more than one Baikal seal show, which is visited with great pleasure by both adults and children.

Baikal seals participants in the show

The Baikal seal has no enemies except people. In the last century, people hunted seals very intensively. These were colossal industrial scale. Literally everything that this animal consists of has been used. Special lamps in the mines were fueled with seal fat, the meat was eaten, and the skin was especially valued by taiga hunters.

It was used to make high-quality and fast skis. These skis were different from regular topics that they could never go back on any steep slope. It got to the point where the animal became smaller and smaller. Therefore, in 1980, a unanimous decision was made to save him, and Baikal seal was entered into The Red Book.

In the photo there is a baby Baikal seal

Diet of the Baikal seal

The favorite food of seals is golomyanka and Baikal gobies. In a year, this animal can eat more than a ton of such food. Rarely, omul may be included in their diet. This fish makes up 1-2% of the animal's daily food. There are groundless rumors that seals are destroying entire populations of Baikal omul. Actually this is not true. It is also found in seals' food, but extremely rarely.

Reproduction and life expectancy of the Baikal seal

The end of the winter period is associated with the reproductive process in the Baikal seal. Their puberty occurs at the age of four. The female's pregnancy lasts 11 months. She crawls onto the ice to give birth to babies. It is during this period that the seal is most at risk from hunters and poachers.

Baikal seal cubs are born white, which is why they are often called “squirrels”

In order to somehow protect ourselves from these potential enemies and from the cruel spring weather conditions seals build special dens. This dwelling is connected to water so that the female can defend herself at any moment and protect her offspring from possible danger.

Somewhere in mid-March, baby Baikal seals are born. Most often the female has one, rarely two and even less often three. The small one weighs about 4 kg. For approximately 3-4 months, the baby feeds on mother's milk.

He is dressed in a beautiful snow-white fur coat, thanks to which they are perfectly camouflaged in the snowdrifts. Some time passes and after molting, the babies acquire their natural gray shade of fur with silver, characteristic of their species. Fathers do not take any part in their upbringing.

The growth of the seal takes a very long time. They grow up to 20 years. It happens that some individuals die without growing to their normal size. After all, the average life expectancy of the Baikal seal is about 8-9 years.

Although scientists have noticed that this animal can live a long time - up to 60 years. But for many reasons and due to some external factors There are very few such long-lived seals among seals, one might say only a few. Most of all these animals are seals of the young generation at the age of 5 years. The age of seals can be easily determined by their fangs and claws.

Scientists claim that the seal lived on the territory of Lake Baikal already in the Tertiary period Cenozoic era, that is, approximately 1.6 million years ago, and its ancestors lived in the northern seas of the Arctic Ocean shortly before that. Another version says that the seal got to Baikal along the Lena River, which is believed to have flowed from Lake Baikal.

The ancestors of the modern seal found conditions suitable for themselves in Lake Baikal and quickly adapted to the characteristics of the ancient reservoir, and then remained to live there. The first mention of the Baikal seal is in the reports of pioneers who came to Baikal in the 17th century. Scientific description seals were first made during the Great Northern Expedition, which was organized by the “Russian Columbus”, the traveler Vitus Bering.

Fact 2: The seal saves the omul

The seal closes the food chain of Lake Baikal, and its only enemy, oddly enough, is man. Despite its clumsy appearance, the seal can reach speeds of up to 25 km per hour in water and still retains the ability to swim into rivers and travel hundreds of kilometers.

The Baikal seal is not just an outstanding swimmer, but also a well-equipped underwater hunter. Big eyes provide her with a catch even in poor lighting conditions. Diving to a depth of 300 meters, the seal can withstand pressure of 31 atm. The seal feeds mainly on golomyanka-goby fish, and in such quantities that it can eat more than a ton in a year.

Thanks to its hunting, this nimble animal has a huge impact not only on the ichthyofauna of the lake, but also on its entire ecosystem. For example, by eating at least 50 thousand tons of small and large golomyankas per year, the seal thereby saves from extinction thousands of tons of important inhabitants of Baikal - macrohectopus, epishura and other crustaceans that would be eaten by golomyankas. In turn, these crustaceans are the main food not only of golomyankas, but also of the beloved omul and other species commercial fish. Thus, the seal provides food for Baikal fish and saves them from extinction.

Fact 3: Nerpa is a talented builder

Seals wait out the winter under the ice, scratching out special vents in its thickness for breathing. Each animal supports several of these open vents. In the hummocks, female seals set up real snow houses for themselves, where in February-March pups are born: this is what young seals are called because of their white-yellow color.

The color serves as their main protection from predators (weak cubs are hunted by crows, foxes or wolves) and makes the babies invisible on the snow-white Baikal ice. Inside such shelters, which mothers set up for their children, a special microclimate is formed, in which even in 20-degree Siberian frosts the temperature can reach 5 degrees Celsius. Here the babies spend the first 4-5 weeks of their lives, and the mother leaves them only during the hunt. The cubs feed on their mother's fatty milk (milk fat content is 50-60%) and manage to grow from 3-5 kg ​​(at birth) to 20-30 kg. At the same time, the total weight of his body increases by 7-9 times, and the mass of subcutaneous fat increases by 22 times. The fat from mother's milk is deposited under the skin of the baby, forming a kind of fat “bag” on the body. This “bag” plays the same role as a sleeping bag for a person.

Fact 4: Seals have their own “sanatoriums”

However, everyone who is seriously interested in Baikal knows what the Baikal seal has favorite place, where you can see hundreds, or even thousands of individuals. This place is the small Ushkany Islands. Such coastal rookeries become a kind of sanatorium or “rest home”: animals that need peace and health often accumulate there. The reason may be wounds that have not healed after winter, unfinished molting on time, or other health problems that the seal comes to heal in the Baikal sun.

Fact 5: The seal has its own alarm clock

In fact, seals cannot breathe underwater. Under experimental conditions, in a large aquarium, a seal can stay under water for up to 68 minutes. In nature, the Baikal seal stays under water for up to 20-25 minutes - this is enough for it to get food or escape from danger.

But at the same time, the seal can sleep in water, and its sleep lasts as long as there is a supply of oxygen in its lungs. The question is, how can she sleep in water, if in an active state she can only be under water for no more than 25 minutes? The fact is that when the seal sleeps, it consumes much less oxygen, since it is in an immobilized state. If you swim up to a sleeping seal, it will not wake up, even if you touch it or turn it over in the water. So only a lack of oxygen can wake up the seal. This is such a reliable alarm clock!

The seal lives in water. The seal does not have gills. The question is, how does a seal breathe under ice in winter?

As a child, I thought that seals swim away to warm seas for the winter. Then I found out that all winter they maintain vent holes through which they come up to breathe. The Chukchi and Eskimos (always before, now very rarely) went to sea with specially trained dogs to look for these very holes for hunting seals.

2.

It is extremely difficult to see such a hole, despite the fact that the hole itself is 50 cm in diameter or more. Above the hole rises a snow-ice dome, which reliably hides the exit from animals and from frost and snow. There are also seals in the Anadyr Estuary. But I only found out that my dog ​​Loki turned out to be a moon dog this Sunday, when I went skiing to Tolsty Cape. The dog found four opening holes while we reached the cape. The hole is so well camouflaged that you can walk nearby, or even not notice it. What gives away the seal's lair is the smell that oozes through a small hole in the "dome" above the hole. But the smell in the hole is not at all fresh cucumbers, like near the holes of Anadyr fishermen.

3. Dome on the hole

4. Found the hole!

5. In some vents, seals arrange birthing beds. They dig entire labyrinths of tunnels under the snow.

6. Inside the hole

7.

8. Literally a few meters from the hole there is a snowmobile track

On May 25, a regional children's and youth environmental holiday is celebrated - seal day. It was first held in 2003 in Irkutsk.

The holiday very quickly became popular in many regions of Russia, including Irkutsk region, the Republic of Buryatia and other regions of Siberia, and is included in the calendar of environmental dates. We collected 10 unique facts about this rare mammal.

The Baikal seal is one of three species of freshwater seals found nowhere else except this lake. The main rookery of the seal is located on the Ushkany Islands, where you can find a lot of food and there are practically no people who pose the main threat to these animals.

What is interesting and unique about the Baikal seal?

1. The seal is the only mammal of Lake Baikal. According to morphological and biological characteristics The Baikal seal is close to the ringed seal, which lives in the seas of the Far North and Far East. There are also some signs of similarity between the seal and the Caspian seal.

2. It is unknown how the seal ended up in Baikal. Some researchers believe that she penetrated him at ice age from the Arctic Ocean through the Yenisei-Angara river system simultaneously with the Baikal omul. Others believe that the entire family of true seals (Caspian, Baikal and ringed seals) initially appeared in large freshwater bodies of Eurasia and only then settled into the Caspian Sea, Arctic Ocean and Baikal. However, this mystery has not yet been solved.

3. The Baikal seal can accelerate underwater to a speed of 25 kilometers per hour. She is an unrivaled swimmer and can easily outrun danger at such speed.

4. The seal dives to a depth of 200 meters and remains under water for 20-25 minutes.

5. A seal can stop a pregnancy: no other animal on Earth can do this. In some cases, the embryo stops developing, but does not die or be destroyed, but simply falls into suspended animation, which lasts until the next mating season. And then the seal gives birth to two cubs at once.

© Ministry natural resources and ecology of the Russian Federation. Sergey Shaburov

© Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation. Sergey Shaburov

6. Pregnancy of seals lasts 11 months. Females whelp in March-April. Fur seals white That's why they are called squirrels. This coloring allows them to remain almost invisible in the snow in the first weeks of life. With the transition to independent feeding on fish, the cubs molt, the fur gradually acquires a silver-gray color in two-three-month-olds, and in older and adult individuals it becomes brownish-brown.

7. The fat content of Baikal seal milk is 60%. The nutritional properties of milk help seals gain weight quickly.

8. Seals build their winter homes from under the ice. They swim to a suitable place, make holes - vents, scraping the ice with the claws of their forelimbs. As a result, their house is covered from the surface with a protective snow cap.

9. The Baikal seal is a very cautious, but inquisitive and intelligent animal. If she sees that there is not enough space in the rookery, then she begins to deliberately splash her flippers on the water, imitating the splash of oars, in order to scare away her relatives and settle down in the vacant place.

10. Seals live 55-56 years. Adult animals reach 1.6-1.7 meters in length and 150 kilograms in weight. Sexual maturity occurs in the fourth to sixth year of life. Females are able to bear fruit up to 40-45 years.

© Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation. C. Elderberry

© Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation. C. Elderberry

From whom should the Baikal seal be protected?

Huge losses of the Baikal seal were recorded in 1996, mainly due to licensed and poaching hunting, as well as chemical pollution of the lake.

“Today, the approximate number of Baikal seals ranges from 75 to 100 thousand heads. This is quite a lot, but there is no fishing now,” said Mikhail Kreindlin, a Greenpeace expert on specially protected natural areas.

Formally, the Baikal seal is still a commercial species and is not listed in the Red Book, but hunting it was banned in 1980. Until 2009, a quota for industrial catching of 50 animals was issued. Since the end of 2014, the quota has been issued only to research institutes.

“Currently, a decline in the number of seals has not been recorded, but the condition of Lake Baikal cannot but affect its inhabitants. For example, a recent drop in water level has led to the drying out of the spawning grounds of fish - the main food for seals. There are also threats that have not yet been realized, for example, the construction of the Shuren hydroelectric station on the Selenga River - largest tributary lakes, which can also lead to severe shallowing and will indirectly threaten the seal too,” noted Mikhail Kreindlin.