Walrus calf rescued in Alaska get round the clock cuddles
This article has been updated with new information about the walrus pup’s death.
Despite ceaseless rescue efforts that included around-the-clock cuddles, a walrus pup found alone July 31 died after succumbing to complications from malnutrition, the Alaska SeaLife Center said Friday.
“While often rewarding, wildlife rescue is inherently unpredictable and comes with it the possibility of great loss,” the center said in a statement. “For those that dedicate their lives to animal care, this is the hardest part of the job.”
The original article is below.
The walrus pup was writhing slowly on the frozen ground of an Alaskan oil field, and it was clearly in distress.
About four miles inland from the Beaufort Sea, a worker saw the 150-pound calf on the North Slope tundra near a road running through a ConocoPhillips Alaska oil field. The baby Pacific walrus was alone, and there were no adult walruses in sight.
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Walrus pups in the wild rely on near-constant maternal care in their first two years of life, so the orphaned calf was clearly in trouble.
After consulting several wildlife agencies, ConocoPhillips airlifted the dehydrated walrus about 700 miles for treatment to the Alaska SeaLife Center’s Wildlife Response Programin Seward, said Carrie Goertz, a veterinarian who is director of animal health at the center.
“It’s unusual to get a walrus here — we’ve only had 10 of them [in 25 years],” Goertz said. “We don’t know how this particular baby became separated from his mother, but we knew that he wouldn’t survive without immediate intervention.”
“He’d apparently been out there for a while because he was in starvation mode,” Goertz added about the pup, which was found on July 31.
She and her staff quickly put together a plan to care for the walrus, which included antibiotics for a possible infection, treating him for dehydration and bottle-feeding him one liter of formula every three hours.
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And there was one more critical element: The baby walrus would need to have someone available to cuddle with him, 24/7.
“Walruses are incredibly social,” Goertz explained. “Walruses love lying up against each other, so we want to emulate that closeness the best that we can.”
For more than a week, veterinary staff members have been taking turns sitting next to the whiskered marine mammal so he can snuggle up next to them if he wants to. He spends about 75 percent of his time sleeping.
“He basically cuddles us,” Goertz said. “We leave it up to him to decide, and he usually wants to. He’s also taking a bottle well, and that’s making his care a lot easier.”
Since Aug. 1, veterinary assistant Hanna Beane has been working eight-hour shifts bottle feeding and cuddling the calf she likes to call a “giant baked potato.”
“He’s really wrinkly and his skin is rough, and he seriously does remind me of a baked potato,” said Beane, 30. “I especially love his whiskers.”
Beane said the walrus usually rests his head and one flipper in her lap while he’s napping.
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“Honestly, to have him lean up against you while he’s sleeping is magical,” she said.
She and other caregivers position themselves so the baby walrus can’t roll over on them and cause accidental injuries. Staff members say they’ll take additional safety measures as he grows.
Walruses can be dangerous in the wild, particularly if they are hunting or defending their young. Fully grown, a male Pacific walrus is up to 12 feet long and can weigh as much as 2 tons. They can live as long as 40 years.
They huddle together in large groups to keep each other warm when sleeping on land.
“Walruses are highly gregarious, social animals, so it’s just a natural thing for [the baby walrus] to want to do,” she said.
The calf will be cared for and monitored carefully for several months before he is healthy enough to send to a wildlife facility or zoo somewhere in the Lower 48, Goertz said.
“In the wild, he would spend up to two years with his mother, and she’d be teaching him to be the best walrus he can be,” she said. “But he doesn’t have that, so as he gets healthier, we’ll be working with people to determine the best placement for him.”
It’s a mystery how the calf ended up four miles inland, but Alaskan wildlife biologist Anthony Fischbach says there are a few possible scenarios.
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“Typically, the female is always with her calf, so something could have happened to her,” he said. “Maybe there was a polar bear involved, or an orca — they prey on walruses.”
Another possibility is that the mother walrus was killed by Alaska Natives who are allowed to hunt walruses for sustenance, Fischbach said.
He said he has never heard of a calf moving so far inland from the coast.
“It’s really pretty rare,” he said, noting that the baby walrus might have swum in a river for a while before heading inland, possibly to search for its mother.
“This calf had to pull itself across low tundra — it’s extraordinary there was such a drive to go someplace,” Fischbach said. “Walruses really are very unusual in the animal world.”
Studies by the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center found there were about 166,000 walruses resting on one beach along the Chukchi Sea in 2018, he noted, while about 189,000 were observed in 2019.
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The greatest threat to the walruses is the loss of Arctic sea ice, which forces the animals to spend more time on land every spring, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Female walruses use the sea ice as a place to leave their calves while they forage, and as a platform to launch dives for clams and snails on the sea floor.
Beane said she has always admired the family-oriented creatures and feels honored to play a part in rehabilitating a young walrus in need.
“He’s got a long way to go before he’s a perky walrus again, but we hope to get him there,” she said.
“I’m proud to be at a center that’s equipped to take him in,” Beane added. “Without his mom, he wouldn’t have made it out there. This is the only chance he had.”
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