A two-ton lifeguard who saved a young cub

Male elephant seals are not known for their paternal instincts. While on the beach during breeding season, these far from gentle giants concentrate on mating with females and fighting other males. As they drive their two tons of mass through the colony in pursuit of these goals, “they will run over pups without hesitation and even crush their own offspring,” says Daniel Costa, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

That made the events of January 27, 2022 all the more striking. Sarah Allen and Matthew Lau, wildlife biologists with the National Park Service, were surveying the northern elephant seal population at Point Reyes National Seashore, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of San Francisco. As they walked past a colony lying on the beach, they saw a young pup resting with an adult female close to the water.

“It was a hot day,” Dr. Allen recalled, so she thought the two were cooling off on the wet sand.

When Dr. Allen and Mr. Lau passed the colony again on the way back, the situation had changed. The rising tide had pulled the pup out to sea and because he was too young to swim, he struggled to stay afloat. Still on the beach, the female responded to the pup's plaintive cries with her own, which attracted the attention of a nearby male.

“We thought, oh, he's going to try to mate with her,” said Dr. All.

Instead, he sniffed the female and then “charged into the surf,” she added. When he reached the pup, he used his body to gently push him back to the beach – probably saving his life.

Dr. Allen has been observing elephant seals for more than 40 years and had never seen anything like it. “I reached out to some colleagues asking if they had seen anything like this, but no one had,” she said. Dr. Costa agreed: “It's completely unusual.”

Dr. Allen and her colleagues published their observation in January in the journal Marine Mammal Science. Dr. Costa said the article could encourage other seal scientists to be on the lookout for similar behavior.

Northern elephant seals are fast during the breeding season (roughly December to March), so males normally try to conserve their energy for mating and fending off rivals. By running around the beach like David Hasselhoff in “Baywatch,” this lifeguard of a seal not only abandoned his harem of females, but also used up valuable energy.

This brought Dr. Allen to interpret what she saw as potential act of altruismwhen one organism sacrifices part of its own well-being to help another.

“He was so determined and directive when he went out there, and so fast,” she said. “And when he came back in, he was so gentle.”

Although the male clearly intended to push the pup back to shore, it is impossible to fully understand his intentions in doing so. And since this is the first time anyone has seen anything like this in elephant seals, Dr. Costa that it was a rare one-time behavior.

Altruism in the animal kingdom is most common between relatives, and because elephant seals were hunted to near-extinction and then revived in the 19th century, many of them are more closely related than would otherwise be the case. Dr. Allen suspects the male seal and the pup he rescued are related in some way, but without genetic data she can't say for sure.

Elephant seals lead an extreme life. When they're not on the beach fasting, fighting and reproducing, they are spend months at sea continuously diving for food – sometimes as deep as a mile deep. “Elephant seals are complicated,” said Dr. All. “We only see a small part of their lives.” She thinks it's time we look at male elephant seals in a new light.

Dr. Costa had thought that elephant seals generally did not have this brainpower of their sea lion cousins. But the dramatic beach rescue at Point Reyes showed him that there may be more to the story than meets the eye.

“Maybe there's more going on up there than I thought,” he said, laughing.