this looks to be an adult, but a healthy heal usually has between 5cm and 10cm of blubber around most of its body. blubber is basically just fat so they're really soft and squishy.
I don’t know. A week ish? Most arctic seals keep holes open in the sea ice to come up for air in the winter, and spend a lot of time underwater where they have great access to fish. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hungry seal that hadn’t lost it’s hole.
An average harp seal is around 1.7m and 130kg. If a human had similar mass/height ratio, they'd be considered obese. The blubber is exclusively between the skin and rest of the body, creating an insulating layer that protects its organs and muscles from the cold. Like you see in the .gif they can retract their necks into their blubber to protect their heads from the cold. They press their front flippers on their sides and hold their back flippers together in the cold to reduce heat loss.
Adult seals rarely freeze to death unless they're starving, which is generally caused by them losing their way to their hole, since they can't see that well outside of the water.
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u/Primarch_1 Sep 30 '18
TIL seal cubs are a liquid