Physical Description
The spotted seal is of the family, Phocidae, or "true seals". Compared to other true seals, they are intermediate in size, with mature adults of both sexes generally weighing between 180 to 240 pounds (81 to 109 kg) and measuring 4.59 to 6.89 ft (1.5 to 2.1 meters), roughly the same size as a harbor seal or ribbon seal. The head of a spotted seal is round, with a narrow snout resembling that of a dog.
The spotted seal has a relatively small body and short flippers extending behind the body that provide thrust, while the small flippers in front act as rudders. The dense fur varies in color from silver to gray and white and is characterized by dark, irregular spots against the lighter background and covering the entire body. Males and females differ little in size or shape. In places where their habitat overlaps with that of the harbor seal, they can be confused with them, as in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Like harbor seals, spotted seals have 34 teeth.
Read more about this topic: Spotted Seal
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or description:
“The real pleasure of being Mick Jagger was in having everything but being tempted by nothing ... a smouldering ill will which silk clothes, fine food, wine, women, and every conceivable physical pampering somehow aggravated ... a drained and languorous, exquisitely photogenic ennui.”
—Anonymous Chronicler. Quoted in Philip Norman, The Life and Good Times of the Rolling Stones (1989)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)