OliverH Current Events

Corkscrew Killer

3/11/16

Publisher: Liz Devitt

Editor:Oliver Hixon

The scientists Philip Hammond and Andrew Brownlow have tracked a seal that started off in Scotland and ended up in Germany. The seals are not only killing the Harbor Seals but video footage shows an adult Grey Seal killing one of its younglings with a spiral cut around it’s body and then eating it. At first the scientists thought that the cut came from a propeller from a large ship, but later realized that they were wrong. This picture shows a dead Harbor Seal on a table being examined for the spiral cut.

When the scientists took a closer look at the seal cuts they noticed that the cut was a very clean cut and wasn’t jagged like a propeller blade would cut. A quote from a professor “Prior to this, we considered it rare behavior if gray seals ate other seals. We also did not think that it was possible for bite and tear attacks to cause such smooth-edged wound margins.”A part of the text says “‘This shift in specialized predation is still fairly rare,’ says Philip Hammond. He’s a population biologist. He also works at the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St. Andrews University. But he was not involved in studying the corkscrew cases. For him, it’s still unclear how big a source of pup deaths the gray seals are. ‘Propellers,’ he worries, ‘haven’t been completely ruled out.’” I think that seals have a life cycle and if the scientist can get the Harbor Seals migrate to another spot they can safely have a spot where they can start a new life hopefully without having a problem. But the hunt isn’t over there will be quite a bit more time before they figure out what to do with the problem.

I think that the author had good thinking spreading the word because if the word didn’t get out there would probably get worse because nobody knew to help or get help so everything would just disappear and nobody would of knew what happened. I thought this article that I found was interesting over the other articles because if Brownlow and Hammond had just left the situation I think it would lead to some serious problems for seals because if all the Grey seals eat the Harbor Seals there will be no food for the Grey Seals then the Grey Seals with die off etc. It relates to our science because we talked about invasive species for our Brook Trout topic and I thought it would be exactly the same if nobody knew and invasive species can be difficult to deal with so I think this will take a few more years to figure out

Sources: Hixon, Oliver Bruce, ed. "Seals: Catching a ‘corkscrew’ Killer."

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