Talk:Elephant seal/Archive 1

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Potential Resources

Gray, Susan Heinrichs. Elephant Seal (Road to Recovery). Cherry Lake Pub. ISBN 1-60279-038-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
Becker, John E. (2005). The Northern elephant seal. Detroit, Mich.: KidHaven Press. ISBN 0-7377-2291-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
Riedman, Marianne (1990). The pinnipeds: seals, sea lions, and walruses. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-06498-4. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
Berta, Annalisa; Sumich, James L.; Kovacs, Kit M. (2006). Marine mammals: evolutionary biology. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-088552-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Why were they hunted?

Why were elephant seals hunted? for meat, for their skins? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.133.79.7 (talk • contribs) 16:08, 3 December 2006 (UTC).

for their oil.--Mbz1 (talk) 02:49, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The page on Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which is a breeding ground for Elephant Seals (and links to this page) mentions "Elephant Seal Oil" as a product. There is no other mention of it that I can find on WP. Definitely room for elaboration on this point by someone who knows something about the subject matter. Or maybe the commercial hunting / exploitation of seals deserves its own page, as I believe is the case for whaling? Kadin2048 (talk) 03:21, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Bucket

This is the famous "I has a bucket" seal CommunistHamster 23:08, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

80 minutes is the longest time for non-cetacean mammals. Dolphins and whales are cetaceans. 68.4.221.215 21:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Mating video?

Do we really need a mating video? it just seems inappropriate

Animals mating "inappropriate"? You've got to be kidding, right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.114.96.45 (talk) 23:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

About the top image

May I please share with you my opinion about the top image of the article. Is it a high quality image? Yes, it is. Does it add value to the article? It may by showing the seals colony. Should it be the top image? IMO, it should not be the top image and I'd like to explain why. The elephant seals got their name from the males trunks. The image in question shows only females (some parts of females, none is shown in whole). Females practically do not have any distinguish characteristics that differ them from other seals. That's why I believe that the top image should be changed in order to show a single male or a male and a female together.--Mbz1 (talk) 21:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you Mbz. Another criticism of the images on the whole page are that they are all of northern elephant seals: there should be at least one of a southern elephant seal. The French page uses a good (though maybe a little bit too dark) gaping shot of a bellowing male:

. The German page has a male and female (even more desirable!) but the quality is rather poor:

. But either is better than the one presently here. Best, Eliezg (talk) 22:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and I notice you have taken some images yourself. Perhaps you would like to suggest one of your own? Eliezg (talk) 22:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your support,Eliezg. I took many images of Southern elephant seals and Northern Elephant seals too. I uploaded some of them to Wikipedia and maybe I'll see what else I have to upload tomorow. I like the images you suggested. The image of the male may be better IMO because it is a better quality and higher resolution than the image of male and female.--Mbz1 (talk) 00:32, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Just to add here, I was just up the San Simeon coast and I got a bunch of shots of some of the seals lounging around, so if you guys want them for the commons, let me know. I don't know if you need any more pictures, but some of the shots are pretty good I think, and I got some of the older males too, which you said you were looking for. Chewbacca1010 (talk) 01:03, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you,Chewbacca1010. Please upload your images to Commons. We could make the galerry in Commons for the elephant seals and your images will be welcome. I've changed the top image to show the male and female together. If IYO you have a better one, please replace it or let's discuss it.Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 04:39, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I've changed all images in the article. May I please ask you, everybody, what do you think. Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 05:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it's an improvement. One useful image would be a wider shot of a breeding colony. Ideally, it would accompany a section in the article where breeding behavior is discussed. In the meantime, perhaps the third image in the gallery could take the place of the birth photo? (the placenta-hungry gulls are obscuring the newborn anyway.) Also, a very desirable illustration - but possibly difficult to find and better drawn - would show the relative size of the elephant seal to a human or something else, since (along with the proboscis) size is their most distinguishing characteristic. Anyways, great photos! best, Eliezg (talk) 06:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment,Eliezg. I agree that a wide shot of a breeding colony would be nice. I'm reluctant however to place the third image of the gallery to the breeding section of the article because it is image of molting females and not of breeding colony. I see what images I have and I hope that Chewbacca1010 would upload some images of a breeding colony. May I please ask you, if you would agree that the sea gulls could also be used to show the relative size of the elephant seals? I'd also like to learn your opinion about adding few more images to the gallery. I believe that an image, which shows a unique behavior may be placed to the gallery in the article. I'm going to add few images today for you to see, but if you believe they should be taken out, I will take them out. Thank you for helping me out with this. Best.--Mbz1 (talk) 13:27, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I just uploaded this image

of a breeding colony, where one could see at least one male, females, pups and gulls. I do not really like this image because the light is not right. I hope to see better ones by Chewbacca1010.Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 14:01, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you quite finished turning this article into your personal image gallery? Because you took the pictures does not make them better than existing ones and I think a little more discussion is meritted than posting something on the talk page, getting a reply from one other person and then changing the images a few hours later. Some of the images in the article now are of less encyclopedic value than those that have been removed IMHO. Mfield (talk) 18:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Mfield. Thank you for your message. May I please ask you to be more specific and tell us what pictures would you replace with what and may I please also ask you to give your reason. Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 20:42, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe I know know why you unhappy,dear Mfield. I've removed your image

. Sorry, but do you really believe that your image has bigger encyclopedic value compare to the images which were added? I'm open to any discussion about the added and removed images. BTW I've removed my own image too in order to add Southern Elephant Seals image. Have you noticed this? I believe I said already and may I please repeat it one more time: as soon as better images are taken and uploaded my images should be replaced with them and I really do not care, if all the images on Wikipedia are taken by the same person as long as they are the best available.Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 20:53, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Not at all, I couldn't care less that you removed my image, its CC'd and people are welcome to do as they will with it. I'm not that childish or self promoting. The issue is that when you make multiple edits to an article, adding lots of your own images and removing many others, that it would be sensible to undertake some kind of discussion before doing so. What this article needs more than anything is more text, not more images. If you want more information, I think the image with the female just having given birth has its focus on a group of seagulls and fails to well depict its title. The male elephant seal image is out of focus and poorly exposed. In addition there is no need for a gallery with so many other images, that's what the category system is for - i.e. Commons:Category:Mirounga_leonina and Commons:Category:Mirounga_angustirostris. If the aim of the editing is to improve the article then images need to be chosen that incite interest and that illustrate the subject simply and clearly, for the reader with no previous knowledge. Mfield (talk) 21:33, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your responce. I agree the text should be added, but it is not for me to do with my English. I've removed only two images from the main body(one of them was my own image and second was yours) and I've removed one image from the gallery. You probably right and I should have waited to discuss the images first before making drastic changes. If you feel this way, please undo all my edits to how the article was before and thank you for your time.I agree that the male picture is not the best, but IMO we need at least one Southern Elephant Seal image in the article. It is much harder to find a dicent Southern Elephant image. May I please offer to your atention few images I took? They all are digital copies of my old prints with the corresponding quality(bad), but here they are

.Of course these are once again mine images and I have many, many, many more.About the gallery. I agree it maybe blown out, on the other hand there's expression:"it is better one time to see than 100 times to hear." Still, if few users belive that most images (includin all of mine) of the gallery should be removed, I absolutely agree with this. Thank you for sharing with me your opinion about female giving birth image. The intention of this image was to show a real life drama, were gulls are the main players. It is interesting to watch a breeding colony of the seals. As soon as a baby is born gulls are surrounding female and pup to get placenta. Have you seen the image I added to the gallery how they ate this placenta? The presence of the gulls indicate the birth of the pup. I saw it three times during few hours and all three times a pup was born. IMO the readers of Wikipedia, who have never seen this behavior, might be interested in this image, but of course I might be wrong. May I please also mention that IMO by showing the seal and gulls at the same image I was able to show the size of the seals?I still waiting for the images by Chewbacca1010. I hope we would be able to find some interesing images there. Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 23:45, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I undid al my changes. Please discuss the images. I believe I've already said everything I had to say and I have nothing more to add to this discussion. Whatever images you find encyclopedic and good quality are fine with me. Thank you all for taking the part in the discussion.--Mbz1 (talk) 00:49, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll give it another week and I guess if nobody minds, I'll change the article to as it was before my last edit. Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 00:16, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

My feelings are:

1) Mbz's taxobox image is far better than the one currently up. From a distance, the current photo can be confused with any species of aggregating pinniped and consquently fails as a strong identifying image. That said, Mbz's seems to me to be cropped a little awkwardly (too much sand, male's tail is sliced) and lacks some color contrast (also, while it doesn't bother me, the semi-retracted penis might be considered distracting). Good taxobox photographs have well contrasted, usually full-body shots of the organism. This one:

is the best in principle, but has the worst quality. But for lack of a better alternative, Mbz's is very good.

2) The consumption of placentae by seagulls is a common and sufficiently interesting feature of pinniped births, but the topic is not mentioned in this article and without explanation the image is confusing. I would prefer the fight photo

in the text.

3) To answer your question above, I do not in fact think seagulls are a useful index for comparing sizes. Seagulls are deceptively large, and the object is a female which is less impressively enormous than a male. Most cetacean articles (see Orca, Blue Whale, Harbor porpoise, etc.) have a nice vector-graphics schematic of a scuba-diver compared to the animal, but we (pinniped people) don't have the person that created those!

4) I have personally never been bothered by galleries (I know some people really hate them), especially in an all too short overview article (as here) that can not accomodate much illustration. They are most useful, however, when the different images highlight different aspects of the organism. I like the: multiple pups feeding shot

(very interesting from a biological perspective), the beach shot, the current taxobox shot of moulting females, the penguin shot

(good for scale), etc. But repeated images are not necessary (no more than one fighting shot, moulting female shot, seagull/placenta shot, etc.).

5) The current version has three photographs of resting females, none of southern elephant seals and none of males. These things need to be addressed and there is plenty of material here to work with.

6) In my view Mbz was sufficiently conscientious about proposing changes on this page before making them. Anybody was welcome to respond at any time. The fact that few people did is not Mbz's problem and can legitimately be equated with tacit consent. The changes were made in good faith and were in large part improvements compared to the current state of the article.

These are my feelings for what they're worth. I agree with Mfield that what this article really needs is more relevant text, but that is a completely different project. In the meantime, the images can and should be improved. Best, Eliezg (talk) 01:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment and for your time, Eliezg. May I please offer to you atention one more image, which shows male, female and pup and at least part of the tail

. This image does not look so good in taxobox, but IMO it is interesting because it shows the whole "famiy" together. Here is the link to all Northern Elephant Seals images I've uploaded so far.I agree with you that this image:

looks very nice in a small resolution of taxobox and maybe we should use this image for now. I believe that because you work with marine mamals you're probably the right person to select the images for the article and the gallery. Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 03:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

This is what I was meaning by discussion, its just much easier to build some kind of consenus and then make changes than for one person to make a lot of edits one after the other when reverting some of them becomes much more awkward. I agree with everything that has been said above, I have also added a couple more images to commons from the same time as my other image including one showing the scarred neck of a male from fighting

. Mfield (talk) 03:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for you comment,Mfield. May I please also thank you for pointing out to me my unacceptable edits. That's why I reverted the images in the article to the way they were before my first edit. Now may I please talk about the scarred male's neck image? The thing is I took very much the same images too:

and

. Your image is of course better than mine and IMO all these images mine and yours should go to Commons gallery. In a mean time may I please ask everybody to take a look at this image:

. Of course contrast could have been much better, but IMO it is kind of cute image and once again showing the whole "family".Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 14:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I have color corrected and selectively sharpened the top/taxobox image and it now looks much better but I am unclear as to whether I can upload it as a new version on the image's Commons page or whether I need to upload it as a whole new image. I can't find any guidelines on whether its acceptable to upload a corrected version and how to transfer the license over. Mfield (talk) 01:04, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your question, Mfield. Please take a look at this image, which was taken by me and edited by someone else . As you could see the person, who edited the image gave my name as the author of the image and added his name after the word "edit by".IMO you should repeat excactly the same licence as the image has now. Maybe to make it easir you could upload image as your own with the new name and then copy and paste information from the old image description page including this template:PD-USGov-NOAA to the licence tab of the new uploaded image. Please add your name as it is shown in my sample. If you'd like I could change the description after the image is uploaded and thank you for doing this.--Mbz1 (talk) 03:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

OK i uploaded it and am about to change the link in the article. Mfield (talk) 04:23, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Great Job! Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 04:38, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually I recorrected and replaced it, I messed the color profiling up when editing. It's better now. Mfield (talk) 05:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

As a matter of fact it is so much better that I replaced my own image in Northern Elephant Seals article with your edit, if you do not mind. Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 13:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey, me again. I have a couple of shots of a whole bunch of them sleeping on the coast, but I'm not sure if it's a breeding colony or not. Anyway, I've been away awhile, so I'll try to remember the photos tonight.Chewbacca1010 (talk) 17:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Ecology

In the ecology section: it isn't true that the elephant seals dive to 1500m is the world record for air breathing veterbrates - what about whales?? especially sperm whale. also a few lines above it says they can swim down to 2000m... Ollie senter (talk) 17:57, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

That does merit clarification/rewording for sure. The world record is the deepest recorded/measured dive by a seal, but presumably they do dive deeper than that, they just aren't all fitted with dive recorders. The bit about air breathing vertebrates came from the reference so I don't know how they missed whales as sperm whales have been recorded diving past 3000m. Mfield (talk) 18:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Breath

80 minutes is really the longest breath-holding of any mammal? I could swear sperm whales went for hours and hours... I guess not. ^_^'

I was wondering about the "longest time for mammal" line too. The Sperm Whale article says they can stay down for at least 2 hours.

Why does it say on the Walrus page that the Walrus is of Carnivora, and also recorded at 4000 lbs?

Maybe it is better to say "land mammal"... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.184.14.79 (talk) 02:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Images

Can we please replace the infobox image with a picture of an elephant seal not pissed off? Three out of the three images within the article (not the gallery) are either seals with their mouths open freaking out or fighting. Is there any reason why this isn't the image in the infobox? It shows both a male and a female, but it's not so angry. --13² 05:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Maximum Diving Depth

According to recent data published in the scope of the Census of Marine Life a Southern Elephant seal was registered with a diving depth of 2.388 m which would set a new record depth for this species and by far top the 1.500 m cited in the current version of the article. I will add this to the article. Hadoriel (talk) 11:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Photo of skeleton

Free photo of skeleton from Macquarie Island: http://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/2868998123/in/set-72157607350816312/ --Snek01 (talk) 14:49, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

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Unclear in "Breeding season" section

The section Breeding season is unclear. It says the following: "Dominant males arrive at potential breeding sites in November, and will spend 3 months on the beach fasting to ensure that they can mate with as many females as possible." and "When the pregnant females arrive, the dominating males have already selected their territory on the beach." It seems unlikely that the females are already pregnant when they arrive, considering that the males have arrived previously and are waiting to mate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:8480:3343:CCC0:9FF1:DC27:6CF1 (talk) 19:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)