Bull seal kills seal pups: first ever images off the Welsh coast

[5RIPLEY]

0.42 The bird ; Ok students ! listen up ! we got the spine here ! everyone can see it ?? yeah ?? lets continue the surgery then..

[Locustgeargirl]

simple. animals are created without excuse. animals have no sense of thought or of right or wrong. however humans r created with excuse & given knowledge or right and wrong. end of story.

[Blackclaw1000]

@Locustgeargirl maybe also a different male in a territory thats not respectet the babys off the other seal male?

[realloyd20]

@Locustgeargirl animals do think, and they were created without thought of right and wrong a looooong time ago, im sure by now they have evolutionized...and i geuss humans didnt eat enough of that fruit, becuase we obviously took the wrong path

[AngelLover]

Oh Nature; how people over react to you. Noone complains when a wasp steals away a spider and leaves it in a hive for all the larva to eat at its leisure, picking apart your legs up to the body slowly for day on end resulting in a long grueling a hideous death... but god forbid a seal kills a pup...

[coracleman]

pablolopezcr - what makes you think I want to change anything? What makes you think I feel sorry for the pup? I've been watching seals every season for a long time  and the first rule is, we don't interfere. So you got me wrong. BTW: it's coraclewoman.

[Craxblorg]

Males of other species sometimes kill infants they believe not to be their own offspring to ensure that only their genes are passed down, but I have no idea if a seal would do this. It would make some sense as I think bull seals live in harems?

[coracleman]

bull seals kill for the same reasons other animals do - territory, or just that the pup smelled wrong or maybe people had been around and disturbed him. We don't always know why it happens, and yes, it's heartbreaking, but until we really know why, we cannot condemn the bull too much. We have a fair few seals around these parts and usually they don't like humans to get too close.

coraclewoman

[pablolopezcr]

@coracleman Can't condemn the bull too much? Under no circunstances anybody can condemn an animal for killing another. First, there's no law forbiding them to do so (in fact, it's exactly the oposite - kill or be killed) Second, animals don't think. They act on instinct. If their instinct tells them to kill, you'd better not get in their way. Third, animals have been doing this for thousands of years. What right do you have for wanting to change this, just beacuse you feel sorry for the pup?

[gottaluvbirds]

@pablolopezcr animals do think. were animals arent we?! instinct is a word meaning something natural thought such as a solutuion to something. an animals instinct is to survive, instinct has nothing to do with how they do it, just 'it'. in conclusion, animals think, about everything they do, if instinct was an automatic 'just go do that thing', then animals would have died from anything.

[Snauzer67]

Erhm and where is the bull attacking/biting the pups?

[GSPxRUSH]

alot of animals are dangerous during mating season

[noodlemaster100]

holy crap i did not want to know that

[earthdragon124]

You can see the spine 0:39

[harlingtonstraker]

Has anyone considered the following:

1: the pups were thought to be fathered by another bull (scent, witnessed incursion to his harem or other reasons)

2: the pups were all male and thus a future threat

3: food scarcity/crowding felt by the bull, so a form of population control

[ronaldinhollew]

Two summers ago I swam in Lundy Island, surrounded by 3 or 4 seals (yet I believe all of them were cows, not bulls). They came within 2 metres of me, and I was amazed how friendly they were (yet I was perified at the time).

I will never again go anywhere near a seal in the water!

[gwynant24]

I've seen bulls crush pups in South Georgia Whether it was by design or in their eagerness to get at the cows, I'm not sure.

[floydstinkyboy]

i'd like to report similar events happen every day in alaska.