Caribbean monk seal

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Caribbean monk seal
Caribbean monk seal in the New York Aquarium

Caribbean monk seal in the New York Aquarium

Systematics
Subordination : Canine (Caniformia)
without rank: Seals (Pinnipedia)
Family : Dog seals (Phocidae)
Tribe : Monk seals (monachini)
Genre : Neomonachus
Type : Caribbean monk seal
Scientific name
Neomonachus tropicalis
( Gray , 1850)

The Caribbean monk seal ( Neomonachus tropicalis , Syn . : Monachus tropicalis ) is an extinct monk seal species from the dog seal family .

description

The males were 2.1 to 2.4 m long and reached a weight of 200 kilograms. The females were generally smaller than the males. A layer of fat, the so-called bubbling , was visible around the neck . The back was brown with a grayish tinge. The snout and underside were light yellow. The hand and foot fins were bare with well developed nails on the front toes. The newborn's fur was long and dark. According to older measurements, the young seals weighed between 16 and 18 kg and reached a length of one meter.

distribution

The range of the Caribbean monk seal was the Caribbean . It stretched northwest to the Gulf of Mexico , from the Bahamas to the Yucatán Peninsula , south along the Central American coast, and east to the northern Antilles . Fossil finds have also been discovered in the southeastern United States.

Way of life

The Caribbean monk seal spent most of its life in the water. She went to rocky or sandy shores to give birth or to protect herself. Their diet consisted of eels , lobsters , octopuses and reef fish.

Reproduction

Little is known about the reproductive behavior of the Caribbean monk seal. The females sought out sandy shores on remote islands or undisturbed beaches on the mainland. The litter time was probably in December, as several females killed in December 1910 on the Yucatán had well-developed fetuses . The average lifespan was about 20 years.

Caribbean monk seal and human

Illustration of a Caribbean monk seal

The Caribbean monk seal was the first New World mammal discovered by Christopher Columbus on the coast of Santo Domingo in 1494 . Columbus mentioned the animals in the report of his second trip to America and called them "sea wolves". He ordered his crew to kill eight of the seals for food. Since then, the Caribbean monk seal has been hunted for its blubber or to compete with fishermen.

In 1707 the naturalist Hans Sloane wrote in a travelogue: “The Bahamas were filled with seals. Sometimes the fishermen caught 100 in one night ”. The Caribbean monk seal has been described as being easily accessible and non-aggressive. Commercial hunting in the 19th century made the Caribbean monk seal rare by the 1880s. At the Arrecifés Triángulos , one of the last strongholds of the Caribbean monk seal in the Bahía de Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico , over 200 animals were killed in 1911. The last confirmed sighting was in 1952 when a small colony was discovered on the Serranilla Bank , a group of tiny coral islands halfway between Jamaica and Honduras.

An airplane survey carried out by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in 1973 in the former habitat of the Caribbean monk seal revealed extensive fishing activities but no evidence of the seals. In 1996, the Caribbean monk seal was added to the IUCN 's Red List of Extinct Mammals . When surveyed in 1997 among 93 fishermen from Jamaica and Honduras, 16 claimed they had seen monk seals in the previous two years. Presumably, however, it is a mix-up with folding hats that have occasionally been spotted in the Caribbean.

After a futile five year search by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , the Caribbean monk seal was officially declared extinct by the US government in 2008.

Eighteen Caribbean monk seals were held in captivity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, four of them in the New York Aquarium in 1910 . Breeding was not successful with any of the animals.

There are several preserved specimens in museum collections. The type specimen is in the British Museum . A stuffed specimen and a skull are kept in the Naturalis Museum in Leiden . The specimen from Leiden was collected by HL Ward in December 1886. Ward killed 49 seals, of which 34 stuffed specimens and seven skeletons have been preserved in museum collections. Ward's material includes the first good set of scientific copies. The American Museum of Natural History has a male, a female, and a cub. The National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC and the Tropical Crane Point Hammock Museum in Key Vaca , Florida also have remains.

Together with the Caribbean monk seal, the endoparasitic mite Halarachne americana , which has been found in human care in all stages of development in the respiratory tract of a single Caribbean monk seal, is also considered to be extinct.

literature

  • Tim Flannery & Peter Schouten: A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals . Atlantic Monthly Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0871137976 .
  • DE Wilson & DM Reeder (Eds.): Mammal species of the World, a taxonomic and geographic reference . 3rd. ed. Smithsonian Institution Press. American Society of Mammalogists. Washington, DC, 2005.
  • Glover M. Allen: Extinct and vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere, with the Marine species of all the Oceans , 1942
  • PJ Adam: Monachus tropicalis . Mammalian Species , 747: pp. 1-9. American Society of Mammalogists, 2004. ( PDF, online )
  • A. Berta & JL Sumich: Marine Mammals: Evolutionary Biology . Academic Press. San Diego, California, USA
  • William G. Gilmartin & Jaume Forcada: Monk Seals in Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals , William F., Perrin, Bernd Würsig and JGM Thewissen (eds.). Academic Press. San Diego, CA, 2002. pp. 756-759.
  • IL Boyd & MP Stanfield: Circumstantial evidence for the presence of monk seals in the West Indies . Oryx No. 32, 1998. pp. 310-316.
  • Jefferson et al .: Marine mammals of the world . FAO and UNEP, 1994.

Web links

Commons : Caribbean Monk Seal ( Monachus tropicalis )  - Collection of images, videos and audio files