Seal Suicide Site Found In Antarctica, page 1

posted on Jul, 19 2005 @ 08:59 PM

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More than 50 mummified seals have been discovered in Antarctica. The seals appeared to have committed suicide. The site which is 30km inland has been named "Boot Hill". The cause of the seals' suicides remains a mystery.

Seal suicide site found in Antarctica

New Zealand researchers have found a bizarre seal suicide site in Antarctica, where dozens of seals have inexplicably left the ocean, travelled 30km inland and gone over a bluff to their deaths.

Antarctica New Zealand (AntNZ) chief executive Lou Sanson named the seal cemetery in the snow-free Dry Valleys near Scott Base as one of the highlights of the discoveries made by the science teams sponsored by AntNZ last summer. "There are 50 mummified seals that appeared to have committed suicide by heading over a bluff in the Dry Valleys area," he said.

"The trouble is sometimes mummified seals look like rocks and you don't always see them until you're a metre away. "Others stand out like sore thumbs. "It's the huge concentration that's so amazing. It would have taken them weeks to crawl there. "We called the site Boot Hill, after the American West, where the bodies of unnamed villains were taken and buried without too much ceremony. "The slope is near Penance Pass and Purgatory Lake, which seems appropriate." The cause of the seals' suicidal journeys away from the sea remains a mystery, but almost all are juvenile crabeater seals.

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This is strange. Why did the seals go all the way there to commit suicide? Like he said: "It would have taken them weeks to crawl there."

wiergraf

posted on Jul, 19 2005 @ 09:18 PM

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Because all of the Canadians are killing them in their Seal Hunts. Its really a sad thing to see.

ZeddicusZulZorander

posted on Jul, 19 2005 @ 09:35 PM

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Originally posted by wiergraf
Because all of the Canadians are killing them in their Seal Hunts. Its really a sad thing to see.

Ummm...Canada is north as in The Great White North, eh?

Antarctica is south, as in as far south as you can get.

Valhall

posted on Jul, 19 2005 @ 09:36 PM

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This is really sad. I remember when I was but a li'l girl seeing the documentary on Harp Seal hunting.

Such cute li'l creatures.

I wonder why they'd do this?

WyrdeOne

posted on Jul, 19 2005 @ 10:05 PM

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Maybe they suffered from a genetic defect that confused their sense of direction, perhaps an inner ear defect or the like? Or maybe they were chased away by something, or running from a natural disaster, like an earthquake?

Animals do seem to have the capability of suicide, maybe it was in protest like the cow suicide in South Park?

Examining the corpses for physical abnormalities is a first step, and maybe chemical analysis of their brains to compare to normal crab-eater seals.

Maybe toxicity in the shells of the crabs drove them insane?

Vegemite

posted on Jul, 19 2005 @ 10:27 PM

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This is the largest mass seal suicide Ive seen in atleast two months.

Im guessing it was some sick perverted right of initiation in some secret seal society.

worldwatcher

posted on Jul, 19 2005 @ 10:47 PM

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it first started with birds diving into the ground, then the sheep jumped off the cliff and now the poor little seals. strange animal behavior seems to be on the increase over the past year or so.

theRiverGoddess

posted on Jul, 19 2005 @ 10:47 PM

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wow......this is sad

I am wondering IF they mate for life? Maybe when a mate is killed or dies the other just goes on this treck to die and join the mate in seal hevan?

They say the bodies are mumified, so maybe this did not take place all at once, but one at a time? Maybe it DID happen all at once and they did this as a group, like follow the leader?
Mumified cant mean recent I would think.......

With so many creatures loosing the sense of direction in recent years, I have to believe its got ~SOMETHING~ to do with magnetic north changing around....

Maybe this graveyard find has everything to do with that

[edit on 19-7-2005 by theRiverGoddess]

Hellmutt

posted on Jul, 20 2005 @ 12:20 AM

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If the seals died a long time ago, then Antarctica looked quite different. Maybe this site was not 30 km from the ocean back then? Closer than 30km or more likely further away? But I guess these Scientists must have thought about that. Antarctica has changed alot just the past 200 years. Here´s an example of how Antarctica has changed from 1800 to 1995.

ANTARCTICA -- THRU THE YEARS

xu

posted on Jul, 20 2005 @ 12:36 AM

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are you sure it is a suicide. for example carretta craettas have a similar tradition, when they feel they are about to die they travel half the world to reach a specific underwater cave and setlle down there to die, and the place is a caretta caretta graveyard for at least hundreds of years, but this is not a suicide but more like a tradition. they are not killing themselves in the cave but they travel there when they feel they are going to end. maybe the same thing about the seals is just being discovered.

Hellmutt

posted on Jul, 20 2005 @ 03:08 PM

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xu,
I see your point and it´s very interesting. I´m not a biologists, so I don´t know seals normal behaviour all that well. But these seals they´ve found were all young and not old.

However, they are not sure exactly how long time they have been dead. Some of these seals might have died over 4,000 years ago.