Sea lions kill, eat baby meat that makes experts confused

Scientists have not been able to determine the reason for the massive male seal killing, tearing off the same species brutally on the Russian island.

A large sea lion was caught killing and eating juveniles on the island of Medny, Russia, according to researchers' reports published on August 14 in the journal Marine Mammal Science. This is the first time this cannibalistic behavior has been reported in the National Geographic, the lions.

Young sea lions do not have any action to incite the attack and the adult male does not have a clear benefit after the death of his fellow man. Researchers suspect the male lion has carried out similar attacks several times before.

Steller lion pounced on the young, biting, throwing and throwing it continuously from front to back. After the offspring died, the male lion tore off the corpses and ate meat. It even swallowed the stomach and other internal organs before throwing away the body.

The gray sea lion tore the young in the North Sea.(Video: YouTube).

Previously, there have been no reports of cannibalism in Steller, the world's largest sea lion. Even the phenomenon of killing new babies is extremely rare in the Steller sea lion population, although this is a fairly common behavior among mammals, according to Vladimir Burkanov, a dynamic biologist. Marine mammals at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Anna Kirillova, a researcher at North Pacific Wildlife Consulting, has seen a similar attack in 2014. The team found two bodies of young children bitten in 2014 and the third child was killed in 2015. All three cases were caused by the same male sea lion and his whole body was covered in blood after every massacre.

Eating the juvenile meat is not enough to meet the nutritional needs of male sea lions. A Steller adult male lion weighs more than 1,100kg while the young male weighs only 16-23kg.

Male sea lions tend to possess high territory and often clash with other males of the same species, even killing opponents who encroach on their area, Burkanov said. But overall, male sea lions still accept the presence of young animals, according to Andrew Trites, a marine mammal biologist at the University of British Columbia."I've never seen any of these scenes," Trites said.

The male lion's motivation to kill young children is even more difficult to understand because the young mother and son go to the beach to make a living while the slaughtering takes place. The act of killing a baby does not make the mother sea lion ready to accept mating. Mother Steller lion defends her baby carefully when her baby is less than a week old. But the baby lion was killed 9 days old and would not be protected even if his mother was present, Burkanov emphasized.

The male Steller lions eat a young calf in 2014. (Photo: Russian Academy of Sciences).

Scientists have only known two cases of Steller male lions killing newly born babies but not eating victims. On the Medny Island in 1991, a male used his teeth to steal the young and smash it into a rock. Earlier, the male intended to attack the seagull but the bird flew away. He immediately vented so the young sea lion was nearby.

Burkanov judged that the lions' act of killing and eating juveniles was due to personality. Some are quite calm, while others are active. The sea lion in the study has very unusual behavior. "This is a mass murderer in the world of sea lions. What you see here is an extremely disturbing personality , " the Trites agreed with Burkanov's conclusion.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature ranks the Steller sea lion in a group that is threatened with extinction. On the Medny island, only 153 juveniles were born in 2016, down from 340 in 1999.