The Walrus

The walrus gathers its main food from the seabed, including clams, cockels, mussels, shrimp, worms, sea cucumbers, and even some octopuses, as well as some fish. Sometimes a large bull will eat a seal that it has attacked with its tusks.
The walrus spends its days in open water near the shore or resting on ice floes. When there are no floes, it hauls out (pulls itself out of the sea) onto rocky shores, often alongide many other walruses. In limited space, walruses even lie on top of each other. Flat flippers, insted of feet, enable the walrus. The forelimbs serve as rudders. Out of the water the walrus can walk almost upright on all fours by turning its back flippers forward. The bumpy bottoms of the flippers heip the walrusgrip the ice. When the ice spreads and thickens into pack ice in the winter, walruses usually south. they cannot breack through the ice to make air holes to breath through underneath. Walruses' blubber (fat) and thick skin keep them warm in the freezing temperatures of the Artic. Blubber may be as much as 6 inches thick.
Large herds of walruses gather during the breeding season. The bulls fight for cows, and the largest bulls with the longest tusks usually win. Each winner will mate with many females. Birth occurs about 15 months after mating, often from April to June, as the herds are heading back north after winter. The female hauls out onto an ice floe to give birth to a single calf measuring about 50 inches. At first the calf travels by hanging into the mother's neck. After 2 weeks, it is able to swim. The young walrus nurses on its mother's rich milk for at least 18 months. At 6 months it begins to eat solid food, and after 12 months it has usually tripled in weight. It's tusks show at this age, but they are only about 1 inch long. At 24 months the calf leaves its mother and joins a herd of other young walruses. Because of the lentgh of time that she cares for hern calf, a female can not breed more than once every 2 years.
Eskimos have hunted the walrus for hundreds of years. They use almost every part of the niaml. Because they traditionally hunted using strong fishing lines, they did not catch enough walrus to seduce its population. Eskimos are still allowed to hunt the walrus, but now they use high-powered rifles. They can kill many more walruses than they did with fishing lines. In the last 300 years commercial hunters caught so many walruses that the species has become almost extinct. There are now about 250,000 walruses in the Bering Sea, but extinction is still a possibility because of their slow breeding rate and the fragile environment that they live in. Even though commercial hunting is no longer allowed, the walrus is still endangered.
The walrus is found in the Arctic seas from Alaska to the Soviet Union. Over-exploitation by commercial hunters has endagered the species throughout its range. The population has improved in the north Pacific, but those in the north Atlantic remain threatened.

We got our information from the "Wildlife Fact File".


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