Fur Seal Pups Essay

Once pups are weaned from their mother’s the frequency of mother-pup vocalizations drastically decreases. The decrease in calling, especially in the pup, is visible as the pup matures. Pups begin to call within minutes of birth, and spend more time calling during their first day of life than ever. Using time-budget analysis, the calling activity of fur seal pups was examined at the ages of 1, 3, 5, 9-12, and 30 days old, the number of calls were negatively correlated with age. This data can be examined that the time spent calling to their mother’s decreased as the pups matured. The mother’s calling activity was also measured on the same days and seemed to correlate with the trend of the pup-calling pattern (Trillmich, 1981). The results from …show more content…
Both when dependent, or still nursing and independent of their mothers, the juveniles emitted stronger responses to the calls of their mother than to the calls of other unrelated females. This evidence is further support that numerous Pinnipeds posses the ability to recognize related individuals, especially their mothers, up to two years after the pup has become independent from its mother and possibly well into adulthood. As stated previously, Insley (2000), showed that 4-year-old females responded more to the calls of their mother than another female from the same colony 3.7– 3.8 years after weaning, this is longer than the 2-year-old Galapagos fur seals who successfully responded to playbacks of their mother’s vocalization only and not to the calls of other nonrelated females. This further supports the ability for long-term recognition and remembrance, it may be possible that selection favors individuals with a stronger ability to recognize their mother’s vocalizations during the first year of life and this ability may just continue into adulthood in a non-adaptive way, however there is much evidence that supports the idea of long-term recognition serving many