Pups
The northern elephant seal pups are born on the shores of the rookeries along the North American coast as far south as Baja, Mexico, with most of the births occurring during January and February of each year.
At birth, the three to four feet long, black-colored pups weigh around sixty to seventy-five pounds, with only five to eight percent being blubber. Some pups are born head first while others are born tail flippers first. Following the ejection of the pup's body comes the afterbirth.
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Their small bodies are covered with a black fuzzy fur which is quickly rubbed off leaving them in their silky black pup seal fur for a little over a month. Maybe the purpose of the black colored fur is that black absorbs sunlight helping keep the pups warm until a good insulating layer of blubber has been built up through the fat-rich mom's milk.
After the act of the birth, the moms nudge and cry out to their newborn pups until the pup moves and returns the cries. The pair create a bond by recognizing each other's scent. Although the birth is often amazingly quick, just a few short minutes, both mom and pup tend to take a nap after going through the ritual of establishing their familial ties and making sure that all's well.
The pups are fully-functioning at birth. They can see, hear, smell, move, flip sand, cry out....and they're born hungry. They will nudge and cry out to their moms to force them to roll over and expose the milk-giving teats.
The moms usually suckle their pups with their extremely fat-rich milk for about twenty-eight days causing the well-nourished pups to gain about ten pounds per day.
For the most part, pups have absolutely no interaction with other pups unless the mom is suckling two of them. Pups will sometimes even try to suckle from other adult seals, female or male, but will soon realize there's no milk to be had from those sources and quickly seek out their mom.
If the rookery experiences severe winter storms causing the pups and moms to get separated, often permanently, one can often see one mom taking care of multiple pups.
In the rookery, the pups are often the first to raise the alarm if an intruder comes within their range of smell, hearing, or sight. An intruder could be another elephant seal, a bird, or any other animal.
These calls of alarm will then set off a cacophony of sounds as the females will then start ' to bark ' causing a chain reaction across the beach until almost all the seals are in an uproar.
Other than feeding and generally watching out for their pups, some elephant seal moms take their pups to the water's edge during the day. Maybe they do so to familiarize the pups with the medium in which they will be spending eighty to ninety percent of their lives.
According to researchers, the ratio of male to female pups born is about fifty fifty.