Harbour seal

The harbour seal is a mammal that lives mainly in the water and is perfectly adapted to its environment. It can dive to a depth of up to 200 metres, stay underwater for 12 minutes and even sleep on the seabed for 30 minutes.

Like all highly evolved animals, harbour seals are very curious and love to play. Unlike eared seals and walruses, they cannot move their hind flippers beneath their bodies; this is why they appear clumsy on land. 

If a mother gives birth to two pups, she accepts only one. The other, known as a ‘cryer’, starves to death. Harbour seal milk is extremely nutritious, with a fat content of 45 per cent. Every day, the juveniles gain up to 1.5 kilograms in body weight. After about five weeks, they switch from milk to fish.

Zoo Zurich feeds around 5 tonnes of fish a year, mainly mackerel and herring. These marine fish are caught in the North Sea and arrive here frozen. The fish are stored frozen, thawed in portions each day, supplemented with mineral tablets and fed to the harbour seals and penguins.