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Today on animal fact files we’re talking about leopard seals. Leopard seals have a reputation for being mean, aggressive predators of adorable little penguins, but penguins are just a small portion of the leopard seal’s diet. Leopard seals are mostly found in the waters surrounding the continent of Antarctica. They spend most of their time in water but utilize pack ice to survive. Pack ice is floating ice that has formed a mass by being crushed together and drifts through the ocean. Leopard seals use this ice for reproduction, molting, and resting.

These large seals may also be found further North in the southern hemisphere, especially during the winter, when juvenile leopard seals may be seen along the southern coasts of Australia, Africa, and South America. Non-breeding and juvenile leopard seals may move further north during the winter because they’re seeking out food. The winter in Antarctica is a time of less food and leopard seals have more competition for prey items. Just what are these seals seeking out as food, we’ll be coming back to this later!

After spending a few years making their northerly migrations, leopard seals are ready to settle down and find a mate. Not much is known about how wild leopard seals mate, though in captivity they mate underwater. In general, these seals are solitary and even when they travel towards the north they do so alone, so the mating season, which lasts from November to early January, is one of the only times they’ll come together. After they mate, they’ll part ways. It’s a lonely life for a leopard seal.

How long a leopard seal gestates isn’t known with certainty. They may be able to delay implantation of the egg in the uterus which would mean a shorter gestation period. Other seals are able to do this, but because leopard seals live in such remote locations and at low population densities, meaning they aren’t found in close proximity to each other, leopard seals are difficult to study, so this information isn’t known. Female leopard seals give birth on the ice during the late spring from October to November.

Just a reminder to our fellow northern hemisphere living people, the seasons are opposite in the southern hemisphere; so when it’s winter here, it’s summer in Antarctica. Leopard seals give birth to a single baby. The pup nurses for four short weeks and then mother and child part ways. The males don’t take any part in rearing the baby and the females likely find a mate shortly after leaving their babies.

In size leopard seals are the largest antarctic seals, though walruses do outweigh them overall. Female leopard seals are larger than males and can reach twelve and a half feet (3.8m) in length and 1,102 pounds (500kg) in weight; males are smaller at 10.8 feet (3.3m) in length and 661 pounds (300kg) in weight. The ladies need to be large so they can take care of their kids!

Though leopard seals are considered apex predators, they may still be taken by orcas who are otherwise known as killer whales. If they can avoid these predators, leopard seals are believed to be able to live up to twenty years in age. Leopard seals are strange because their diets encompass a range of animals.

Most people know these pinnipeds for their penguin eating tendencies, but they also eat other seals, cephalopods, and fish; perhaps, however, the most surprising food they eat is krill, and what might be even more surprising is that krill make up a majority of the leopard seal’s diet! Leopard seals have teeth which allow them to consume these different types of prey. While their incisors and canines, the teeth towards the front of their mouths, are useful for tearing prey into easy to manage pieces, a leopard seal’s back teeth, their molars, come together to form a sieve which can easily catch krill as water passes through. It’s sort of like how the baleen of certain whale’s helps them filter feed!

For more facts on leopard seals, check out the links in the description. Thank you to Gregory for today’s request. Give a thumbs up if you learned something new today, and thank you for watching Animal Fact Files.