The Homeliest Creature

Recently I have attended meetings on walrus, and my god, what a homely creature! There haven’t actually been any walruses in attendance at these meetings, but there have been plenty of pictures. They are all whiskers and eyeballs!

See, I told you! (P.S. Again, none of these pictures are mine - I haven't had the pleasure of seeing one of these guys in the wild - so hopefully my blog site won't get shut down!)



I have learned some interesting things about them though. The walrus is a relatively long-lived, social animal and is considered a keystone species in Arctic marine ecosystems. Adult male walrus can weigh up to 3,700 lb - females weigh about two-thirds as much – making them the second largest pinniped (fin-footed mammals – seals and walrus), after elephant seals. Their blubber layer is up to 15 cm (5.9 in) thick!

They live primarily in shallow oceanic shelf habitat, spending a significant proportion of their lives on sea ice in pursuit of their preferred diet of molluscs, especially clams. They forage on the bottom using their sensitive whiskers. They suck meat from clams by sealing their powerful lips around them. The walrus has an air sac under its throat which acts like a floatation bubble and allows it to bob vertically in the water and sleep.

Gestation lasts 15 to 16 months and walrus make excellent mothers - they will defend their young fiercely. I have heard stories of mothers clutching their young close to their bodies and hiding them beneath them in the water when hunters approach. Calves weigh 100–170lb at birth and are able to swim immediately. The mothers nurse for over a year before weaning, but the young can spend up to 3 to 5 years with the mothers.

Look at those whiskers! They actually make earrings up here out of walrus whiskers and they are surprisingly nice!

The walrus has played a prominent role in the cultures of many indigenous Arctic peoples, who have hunted walrus for their meat, fat, skin, tusks and bone. Traditional hunters used all parts of the walrus. The meat, often preserved, is an important winter nutrition source; the flippers are fermented and stored as a delicacy until spring (I have also heard about fermented walrus head, also considered a delicacy); tusks and bone were historically used for tools as well as material for handicrafts; the oil was rendered for warmth and light; the tough hide made rope and house and boat coverings; the intestines and gut linings made waterproof parkas, etc. While some of these uses have faded with access to alternative technologies, walrus meat remains an important part of local diets, and tusk carving and engraving remain a vital art form.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the walrus was the object of heavy commercial exploitation for blubber and ivory and its numbers declined rapidly. The Atlantic Walrus was nearly eradicated by commercial harvest and has a much smaller population than the Pacific Walrus; today their population is probably below 20,000.

The males possess a large baculum up to 63 cm (25 in) in length, the largest of any land mammal both in absolute size and relative to body size. What’s a baculum, you ask? A baculum is a bone found in the penis of most mammals – I know right? I was very surprised the first time I heard about baculums during my undergrad. It is absent in humans – this shouldn’t come as a surprise - but present in other primates, including the closely-related chimpanzee.

Walrus baculum

Oosik is a term used in Native Alaska cultures to describe the baculum of walruses, seals, sea lions, and polar bears. The oosik is a polished and sometimes carved baculum of these large northern carnivores, sold as souvenirs to tourists by Alaska Natives. In 2007 a 4.5-foot (1.4 m) long fossilized penis bone from an extinct species of walrus, believed by the seller to be the largest in existence, was sold for $8,000. I was reviewing hunt plans for walrus and was surprised to see the baculum as one of the trophies for sport hunters to keep, along with the tusks and hides. Sport hunters pay a lot of money to come to Nunavut to hunt walrus; the communities keep the meat.

Giant fossilized walrus baculum... how big was the walrus!!!

One thing is for sure though! Walrus babies are the cutest!!!

More about northern de-lights!

Happy New Year one and all! Hope you enjoyed the holidays. I was home in Nova Scotia for two and a half weeks, and I certainly enjoyed every moment of it. It wasn’t easy to leave, but I’ve been back for over a week and already I feel myself settling back into my old routine.

The weather here was been absolutely beautiful, other than some overcast skies over the weekend. Despite the -20 temperatures, the weather continues to be unseasonably mild! It should be between -30 and -40 pretty consistently from mid-January to mid-February. I personally am prepared to accept that this is a result of the effects of La Nina, with a touch of global climate change, and keep things as they are! Clear and sunny skies during the day make for fantastic aurora borealis (northern lights) viewing when the sun goes down, which is shortly after 3pm these days. That means I get to enjoy the show on my walk home from work at 5pm. I haven’t done much this week other than catch up at work, so I thought we could talk a little bit about auroras.

You can often find me standing on the side of the road as cars dash by with my eyes on the sky (I discovered some time ago that it is not wise to look up while attempting to walk). At these moments I feel very child-like, marvelling over some natural phenomenon for the first time. I am usually too mesmerized and awe-inspired to think too much about what they are and why they occur – they are almost too beautiful to be explained - but alas the scientist in me eventually takes over and I like nothing more than a good science lesson…

So what are they? The bright dancing lights of the aurora are actually the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere. I said what? You may have to read this sentence a couple of times to really take in what it says.

The Earth is constantly immersed in the solar wind, a continuous flow of free electrons and positive ions emitted by the Sun - a result of the million-degree heat of the Sun's outermost layer, the corona. Blown towards the earth by the solar wind, these charged particles are largely deflected by the earth's magnetic field; however, the earth's magnetic field is weaker at the poles so that some particles enter the earth's atmosphere and collide with gas particles. Collisions between these ions and atmospheric atoms and molecules cause energy releases in the form of the dancing lights of the auroras. Seen from space, these fiery curtains form a thin ring around the earth’s pole (see pictures below... so awesome).

Variations in the colour of auroras are due to the type of gas particles involved in the collisions. The most common aurora color, a pale yellowish-green (you have seen these in some of my pictures, by far the most common I have seen), is produced by oxygen molecules about 100km above the earth’s surface. Rare, all-red auroras are produced by high-altitude oxygen at heights up to 500km, whereas nitrogen produces blue or purplish-red aurora. The lights of the aurora extend from about 80km above the earth to as high as 640km and typically appear as a diffuse glow or as “curtains” that extend in an east-west direction. Each curtain consists of many parallel rays lined up with the direction of the magnetic field lines. At some times they form "quiet arcs", while at others they are "active auroras" and evolve and change constantly.

Auroras are seen in both the northern and southern hemispheres. 'Aurora borealis', the lights of the northern hemisphere, means 'dawn of the north'; 'Aurora australis' means 'dawn of the south'. Interestingly, scientists (oh, those scientists!) have learned that in most instances northern and southern auroras are mirror-like images of each other that occur together with similar shapes and colors, though in the south the lights are not often seen as they are concentrated in a ring around Antarctica and the southern Indian Ocean.

In Roman myths, Aurora was the goddess of the dawn. Many cultural groups have legends about the lights. In medieval times, the occurrences of aurora displays were seen as harbingers of war or famine. The Maori of New Zealand shared a belief with many northern people of Europe and North America that the lights were reflections from torches or campfires. The Menominee Indians of Wisconsin believed that the lights indicated the location of manabai'wok (giants) who were the spirits of great hunters and fishermen. The Inuit of Alaska believed that the lights were the spirits of the animals they hunted: the seals, salmon, deer and beluga whales. Other aboriginal peoples believed that the lights were the spirits of their people.

The best time of year to watch for aurora displays is in the spring and fall (I didn’t see any until well into September), but winter in the north is also generally a good season because of the long periods of darkness and the frequency of clear nights. Researchers have also discovered that aurora activity is cyclic, peaking roughly every 11 years, with the next peak period in 2013. Not sure that I will still be here then...

They are occasionally seen in temperate latitudes, when a magnetic storm temporarily expands the aurora oval. Large magnetic storms are most common during the peak of the eleven-year sunspot cycle or during the three years after that peak. The auroras that resulted from the "great geomagnetic storm" on both August 28 and September 2, 1859 are thought the most spectacular in recent recorded history. The aurora event which occurred on September 2, 1859 produced aurora so widespread and extraordinarily brilliant that they were seen and reported in published scientific measurements, ships' logs and newspapers throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia.

Check out these amazing pictures! I didn’t take these pictures, by the way... in case there was any confusion...

Aurora borealis

Aurora australis

This one is on Jupiter!

This one is mine though...