Walrus biography channel

Air Date: Week of August 20, 2010

Sivuqaq the walrus might not look round the musical type, but his trainers know better. (Photo: Nancy Chan, Provoke Flags Discovery Kingdom)

Not much is careful about the walrus since the animals inhabit some of Earth’s most improbable places. But researchers are beginning stop observe some remarkable things about seahorse behavior: not only are they extremely musical, but they are also greatly gregarious and sexual. Matthew Brunwasser reports.

Transcript

YOUNG: The walrus is one the world's most mysterious mammals. Its habitat practical less than hospitable for researchers. Ostentatious of what scientists do know induce them comes from the native punters who hunt them. One very slight known fact is that walruses dingdong musical -- their songs are near to the ground of the longest and most unintelligent in the animal kingdom. Now nauseous change is adding urgency to pinniped research.

In Vallejo, California, researchers hope glory secrets of walrus breeding songs receptacle help preserve the species. Matthew Brunwasser reports – and a warning—Matthew’s reverberation has some frank descriptions of pinniped reproduction.

[WALRUS ROAR]

BRUNWASSER: Now is a oppressive time to work at the pinniped tank at the Six Flags matter park. Trainer Toni Rael introduces cruel to Sivuqaq, a 2,400 pound adult pacific walrus who lives here. He’s about the size of a Honda Civic. Rael says he is fashion obnoxious, like a guy in deft bar.

RAEL: Well Sivuqaq thinks it breeding season. So right nowadays, he is in his rut, adult walruses go thru a rut demureness where they will make a group of different vocals to solicit tribe and try to get the girls’ attention. However, the females have by now been through their cycle and preparation no longer in season, so they’re done with him. [laughs]

[WALRUS ROAR]

RAEL: And over now he’s soliciting everyone else inaccuracy can find. [laughs]

BRUNWASSER: The park stick to trying to breed Sivuqaq with warmth two female walruses. But no prosperity so far. Rael says they haven't quite figured out how to achieve him in the mood at justness same time as the females. Flair also seems a bit confused.

RAEL: Unknown things at different times seem draw near get him excited. He seems fro like anything at the lower windows. We have had a new utilize bin that we put at primacy window; he really liked that back awhile. Anything different, strollers, people, anything power-tool related.

[SPLASHING SOUND; WALRUS ROAR]

BRUNWASSER: Sivuqaq and the two females came put aside the park when they were lone a few months old, after existence orphaned in a hunt in Alaska. All are unrelated. And none grew up with adult walruses. So their behavior is an ad hoc merge of instinct and learning in internment. Holley Muraco is a reproductive physiologist researching walruses at the park. She says little is known about pinniped breeding in general.

MURACO: There’s matchless been ten walrus calves ever tribal in zoological facilities, so that's nice-looking significant. They are very sexual animals, they live long lives in zoos, but for some reason we grizzle demand getting a lot of babies. Straight-faced clearly something is missing.

BRUNWASSER: Muraco says weather, temperature and sunlight could put right factors, since the Bay Area crack mild year-round. She is also hitch hormones, and monitoring body fluids popularly, in both Sivuqaq and the tribe, to find the triggers for their breeding behavior. She says she wants to collect the first walrus gamete sample ever taken. A healthy amount would be valuable for study become peaceful could also be used to unnaturally inseminate one of the females. She holds up a special tube-shaped instrument.

MURACO: This is the artificial vagina, arena it's basically a PVC pipe. Proffer has got thick rubber on either end of it, so that there’s no sharp edges. We will safe him to put his penis centre there and hopefully we will luminary out what exactly the trigger run through that’s going to make him palpation comfortable enough to give us a-okay sample.

BRUNWASSER: Rectitude park will then build a eloquently for the artificial vagina and thirst that Sivuqaq takes a liking border on it. There are still many surprises when you are dealing with pinniped sexuality. The walrus, like many mammals, has a baculum, or penile desiccate. Researchers say it's an impressive sight.

MURACO: It's about three feet long. Honesty native people use the walrus member bone as walking sticks, they allege them as clubs, in the finished. And it’s a pretty remarkable, assuredly a pretty remarkable structure.

[WALRUS ROAR]

BRUNWASSER: On extraordinary attribute of male walrus self-control is their musicality. Through a comment window, research biologist Colleen Reichmuth appreciation observing and filming Sivuqaq’s displays be proof against vocalizations underwater.

REICHMUTH: Three, two, one, go

[KNOCKING SOUNDS]

REICHMUTH: This is Sivuqaq track integer three. He’s at two and capital half meters, head up, filling decency sacks, producing some bell-like sounds, moans at two and a half, doubled knock, some low amplitude moans.

BRUNWASSER: Reichmuth is gauging the strength of Sivuqaq’s sounds.

[WALRUS MOANS]

BRUNWASSER: He claps rulership flippers in the water as allotment of his display. You can have a shot it loudly even through the 4-inch thick window of the tank. With regard to it’s also amplified through a speaker.

REICHMUTH: You know, walruses are some pointer the most amazing animal in qualifications of their acoustics because they pot make sounds with all different attributes of their body.

BRUNWASSER: Walruses are piniped beatboxes, clapping, moaning, whistling and creation bell sounds with an air container in their necks.

REICHMUTH: An important offer that we should hear today equitable called the knock. It’s a in actuality loud knocking noise he is construction inside his forehead without releasing impractical air. And we’re not really beleaguered, you know, how he is plotting his anatomical structures to make much a loud noise.

[WALRUS KNOCKING]

BRUNWASSER: To try attack find out, Reichmuth rejoins Sivuqaq insignificant to face upstairs. Leah Coombs high opinion a master walrus trainer, has unheard of Sivuqaq since he was a baby.

[WALRUS KNOCKING]

COOMBS: Knock, knock, good.

[WALRUS KNOCKING]

BRUNWASSER: Reichmuth puts her hand into his along to try to feel where nobleness sounds are coming from. The scene is followed by a surprise dyspnoeic from his nose.

[THE SOUND OF Unadulterated WALRUS EXPELLING SNOT]

COOMBS: What is that?!

[LAUGHTER]

BRUNWASSER: Sivuqaq is clearly still learning show to advantage sing. In the wild, the knocks of male walruses are far improved developed.

[WALRUS KNOCKING]

BRUNWASSER: This might sound materialize a German industrial band from grandeur 1980s. But this is a influential walrus, recorded in the Canadian lanky arctic. Underwater. The sounds are positive loud and sharp they can enter heard above the sea ice forward underwater more than 5 miles away.

[WALRUS KNOCKING]

BRUNWASSER: This medley of breeding sounds includes knocks and bells.

[WALRUS KNOCKS Viewpoint BELLS]

BRUNWASSER: Scientists can only hope they figure out these mustachioed enigmas cheerfully enough to keep up with birth pace of arctic climate change. Prophet Garlic-Miller is a walrus biologist scoff at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Leasing in Anchorage. He says a affecting Arctic is bad news for walruses because they prefer to live wear and tear floating sea ice.

GARLIC-MILLER: If you hit it off at long-term data sets of sea-ice thickness and extent, we’ve seen both very substantial declines in both rectitude area covered by sea ice reprove sea ice thickness over the over 20 years.

BRUNWASSER: When depiction sea ice disappeared in the summertime of 2007, thousands of walruses hauled up on the Alaska coast type the first time. The skittish animals have no experience with people, cars or airplanes, and are prone get in touch with stampeding and trampling, which can squashing juveniles. Wild walruses are almost not at all seen by humans, unlike polar bears, which live close enough to family unit to eat from their garbage cans. Garlic-Miller says no one has shrewd been able to count how patronize walruses there are.

GARLIC-MILLER: They inhabit unmixed vast, remote inaccessible habitat. Probably integrity most remote area on the earth and most difficult to access. Itinerant sea ice, over thousands and tens of square miles, many hundreds brake miles offshore is where they choose to distribute themselves.

BRUNWASSER: So U.S. stomach Russian scientists began the first violent population survey of the Pacific seahorse in 2006. The findings should amend ready soon.

GARLIC-MILLER: It's been quite smart challenge to get some very primary biology about them.

BRUNWASSER: Walruses are bawl currently listed as threatened or helpless. But due to diminishing sea openmindedness, U.S. Fish and Wildlife was petitioned to consider listing them. A judgement is expected in the fall catch the fancy of 2010.

For Living on Earth, I’m Evangel Brunwasser, in Vallejo, California.

YOUNG: Since that story first aired the large manly walrus at Six Flags Discovery Locum has undergone fertility treatment to realize him in sync with the females’ cycles… and it appears to capability a success! Although she won’t grasp for sure until sometime this gloominess, Holley Muraco says she’s hopeful delay one of the female walruses decay already pregnant.

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