AnAge entry for Mirounga leonina
Classification (HAGRID: 02228)
- Taxonomy
-
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia (Taxon entry)
Order: Carnivora
Family: Phocidae
Genus: Mirounga
- Species
- Mirounga leonina
- Common name
- Southern elephant seal
- Synonyms
- Mirounga leonina crosetensis, Mirounga leonina falclandica, Mirounga leonina macquariensis, Phoca leonina, Macrorhinus leoninus macquariensis, Macrorhinus leoninus crosetensis
Lifespan, ageing, and relevant traits
- Maximum longevity
- Not yet established
- Observations
The total gestation time, of about 11.5 months, includes a 3 to 4 months period of delayed implantation [0443]. Males are typically much bigger than females. In the wild, males have been reported to live more than 23 years [0001], and there are anecdotal reports of animals living over 25 years. Their longevity in captivity has not been studied in detail, but one specimen lived 23.7 years [0671].
Life history traits (averages)
- Female sexual maturity
- 1,059 days
- Male sexual maturity
- 1,825 days
- Gestation
- 220 days
- Weaning
- 21 days
- Litter size
- 1 (viviparous)
- Litters per year
- 1
- Inter-litter interval
- 365 days
- Weight at birth
- 42,500 g
- Weight at weaning
- 124,500 g
- Adult weight
- 1,400,000 g
- Postnatal growth rate
- 0.0008 days-1 (from Gompertz function)
Metabolism
No information on metabolism is available.
References
- [0671] Richard Weigl (2005), Longevity of Mammals in Captivity; from the Living Collections of the World
- [0443] Ronald Nowak (2003), Walker's Marine Mammals of the World
- [0001] Carey and Judge (2000), Longevity Records: Life Spans of Mammals, Birds, Amphibians, Reptiles, and Fish
- [0455] Virginia Hayssen et al. (1993), Asdell's Patterns of Mammalian Reproduction: A Compendium of Species-Specific Data
- [0731] Zullinger et al. (1984), Fitting sigmoid equations to mammalian growth curves
External Resources
- Integrated Taxonomic Information System
- ITIS 180671
- Animal Diversity Web
- ADW account (if available)
- Encyclopaedia of Life
- Search EOL
- NCBI Taxonomy
- Taxonomy ID 9715
- Entrez
- Search all databases
- Ageing Literature
- Search Google Scholar or Search PubMed
- Images
- Google Image search
- Internet
- Search Google