Leopard seal attack wounds

This crabeater seal had the worst and most recent wounds from a leopard seal attack that the team had seen. The wounds showed almost no healing or infection and so they estimated that they were only a day or two old. The two parallel wounds were made by the two upper canine teeth of a leopard seal, and had sliced through the seal’s tough fur covered skin and over one inch into the blubber layer. About a foot to the left of these cuts there is a smaller corresponding wound from the lower jaw of the attacking leopard seal. On the other side of the seal was the fourth and largest wound: 10 inches long and 1.5 inches deep. It is hard to imagine that this seal can survive such an attack but 50% of the crabeater seals that the research team examined had healed scars like these. On the sea ice, near the icebreaker Oden.

Credit to read: Photo by Jeff Peneston (PolarTREC 2008/2009), Courtesy of ARCUS