157 images Created 21 Jul 2019
Walruses
With wrinkled pink and brown hides, the walrus is a long-tusked marine mammal with grizzly whiskers and an enormous body filled with insulating blubber. They are a keystone species in the Arctic marine ecosystems. They live only in the Arctic and the Inuit refer to them as "tooth-walkers" because they oftentimes pull themselves along the beaches using their long tusks which are found on both males and females and can extent to about 3 feet/1 meter. Walruses are pinnipeds, or fin-footed mammals and their skin is covered by a thin layer of short, coarse hairs. They feed on the ocean floor using their extremely sensitive whiskers as a detection device feeling for molluscs, invertebrates and shellfish and can swim to a depth of around 100 meters/ 320 feet all though they normally do not go much deeper than 20 -30m/ 65-100 feet. Their blubber enables them to live comfortably in the frigid Arctic where they can lower their metabolism and heartbeats to withstand the polar temperatures on the ice and in the water. There are two sub-species of walruses - the Atlantic and the Pacific and both migrate with moving ice floes.
