Elephant Sloats in Love

It's Valentines Day, and the thoughts of elephant sloats turn to...love, same as with humans! Yes, February is the mating season for the elephant sloats. Here at Point Piedras Blancas, there are vast numbers of them...I've commented on this in earlier posts. This whole group has grown up here since about 1990, when they first started hauling out on these beaches. Now there are probably thousands of sloats here, so they have been very successful at establishing their colony. Pups are born in January...hundreds each year...and in February the sloats start making new pups!

Here a couple of bloke sloats are scuffling on the shoreline. In many instances the winner gets to hang with the sheila sloats in the vicinity, but I watched these two for awhile and they appeared to both be batchelors, hanging out on the edge of the action but blocked from participating by older, bigger bloke sloats. These guys could just be doing sparring practice.

The alpha bloke sloats get the sheilas! Here's a happy couple in rapturous embrace on the beach. Notice how he affectionately hugs her with his flipper! In reality, there are disputes. Sometimes the bloke has to chase the sheila around a bit first, and sometimes they bicker. Sometimes the sheila sloats argue among themselves. And the blokes are rather, uh, boorish...they occasionally run right over the pups when moving about, which is hazardous and sometimes lethal to the pups, since a full grown bloke sloat weighs in around 3 tons! But somehow, given freedom from human hassles, things get done and the elephant seal colony thrives.