Another seal baby

Yes, the seal pup I blipped on Sept.20th has been joined by a second; both mothers were also lying with their infants on the shingle in the cove when I went to look. They were too spread out to include them effectively in a single shot but I liked the way this new mother (lighter in colour than the first) was looking back at her baby which she had left wedged beside a rock. (I've moved it slightly closer to her for the sake of the picture and it looks a bit small in proportion.)

You can actually see, maybe with the magnifier, her paired nipples low down on her belly. Twins are rare for grey seals but do occasionally occur. Seal milk is 60% fat, one of the richest of all, as the infant has to acquire a thick layer of blubber to protect it and keep it warm in the open and then, three weeks later, when it enters the sea where it will spend its life.

Co-incidently another seal birth this week, on Skomer Island, off the south coast of Pembrokeshire, was captured by a lucky photographer in an amazing series of shots.

The text mentions that smell, not touch, is crucial as a means of bonding and recognition for seals. It's a vast sensory area that we as humans have lost connection with, although mothers and babies, and lovers, have been shown to recognize each other smells, perhaps unconsciously. Animals can smell approaching death too, in their own and other species. Our smells are as personal and individual as our DNA (into which they are hardwired); very probably one day they will be used, like our irises and our fingerprints, to demonstrate we are who we say we are. We'll just need to waft our skin towards the electronic nostrils of an ATM to milk it of some cash.