As of last calendar month , scientist study walruses can map out just where the blubbery creature hang out in the coastal Pacific — and where they ’ve hung out for the past 160 years , NPRreports .
A newdatabaseyears in the make papers the locations of walrus “ haulouts”—when the nautical mammals hazard onto the beach or ice to lie between fertilize dangerous undertaking , often in mathematical group that routine in thethousands . Why these hordes of seahorse gather where they do is somewhat of a mystery . Haulouts are n’t always on a beach that ’s near their hunting ground , and they willswitch locationsseemingly at random after years of flocking to the same spot each year .
And because of clime modification , the options for resting spots are becoming limited since the water ice ice floe that have been haulout hot spots in the past are thaw . Female and young walruses especially tend to pucker on ice , since haulouts can be middling high-risk for them , should there be a stampede set off by the visual aspect of a predator or another unpleasant surprisal . Now , some of those frosting floe are no longer usable to them .
Walruses on land have been fascinating naturalist , observers , and hunter for centuries . In 1874 , naturalist Henry Wood Elliott described a gathering of 150 male sea horse in Alaska as look like “ so many gnomes or demons of fair romance , ” as NPR quotes . ( He was clearly appalled by them : " The longer I looked at them the more heightened was my disgust ; for they resemble distorted , gangrenous , amorphous hoi polloi of flesh , " hewrote . ) The unexampled database ’s God Almighty , including both U.S. and Russian scientist , cite sometime ship ’ log dating back to the 1850s , oral histories from sea horse - hunt down aboriginal hoi polloi , and books and articles from Russia , Canada , and the U.S. The resulting database log 150 know walrus haulouts , documenting how many walruses have been keep there , the ages and sexes that tend to congregate , what seasons it has been used during , and what decennary seahorse were last seen there .
Hopefully , tracking walrus haulout patterns will help scientists get a line how they take their lie fleck , and how those spots are evolving due to clime change .
[ h / tNPR ]
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