Walrus
Odobenus rosmarus
The tooth-walking sea horse — 700 whiskers and a built-in ice pick.
Odobenus rosmarus means tooth-walking sea horse, which is exactly what a walrus does: it hooks its metre-long tusks over the edge of an ice floe and hauls a tonne and a half of itself out of the water. Then it goes and eats several thousand clams.
On the conservation status
Listed as Vulnerable in 2016. Walruses depend on sea ice as a floating rest platform above their feeding grounds — and that ice is disappearing.
- Length
- 2.7–3.6 m (9–12 ft)
- Weight
- Males up to 1,900 kg
- Lifespan
- About 40 years
- Diet
- Clams, worms, snails, sea cucumbers
- Tusks
- Up to 1 m — both sexes have them
- Whiskers
- 400–700 stiff vibrissae
The good stuff.
The tusks are canine teeth
They keep growing for life, and both males and females have them. Walruses use them to haul out onto ice, to break breathing holes from below, and to settle arguments about who gets the good spot.
The moustache is the real tool
Those hundreds of thick whiskers sweep the muddy seafloor in the dark, feeling for clams. A walrus can identify and sort shellfish by touch alone, faster than you could by looking.
They eat clams like a vacuum
A walrus seals its lips around a clam, pulls its piston-like tongue back, and sucks the meat straight out of the shell. Thousands of times per meal. The shells stay on the seafloor.
They change colour
In cold water blood vessels near the skin close down and a walrus turns pale, almost white. Warmed up on the ice, blood floods back and it flushes a bright pinkish brown.
Sea ice is their raft
Ice floating above shallow feeding grounds lets walruses rest between dives without swimming to shore. When it melts, thousands are forced onto land — and in those crowded haul-outs, stampedes crush calves.
Calves stay for years
A walrus calf nurses for up to two years and stays close to its mother for three to five. Females will defend a calf that isn't even theirs.
Wait, really?
- ✦
Their blubber can be 15 cm thick — enough to survive water just above freezing.
- ✦
Males inflate air sacs in their necks to make a deep bell-like gonging sound underwater during breeding season, and can use those sacs as a built-in flotation pillow while they sleep in the water.
- ✦
A walrus can slow its heart rate right down to survive long, cold dives.
What it sounds like
Grunts, barks, roars, clacks — and an underwater bell-like gong from inflatable neck pouches.
Where you might see one
The Arctic — the Bering and Chukchi Seas, Svalbard, and northern Greenland and Russia.
The trouble
- Sea ice loss and forced land haul-outs
- Stampedes crushing calves
- Increasing Arctic shipping and industry
- Ocean acidification affecting the clams they eat
One real thing
This one is climate, plainly. Learn how your home is heated and powered, and push the grown-ups in your life to ask the same question.
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