Apparent twin pups of the weddell seal near Mawson, Antarctica

Phocid seals give birth annually, generally to a single pup. Twins have been reported occasionally, either from observations made in utero or from observations of live pups in the field. Examples of the former are reports of two embryos in a Weddell seal, Leptonychotes weddellii and of twin foetuses of a southern elephant seal, Mirounga leonina. Observations of two pups suckling one adult female have been reported for weddell seals. For southern elephant seals, an adult female that expelled two placentae and gave birth to a pup while another newborn pup was nuzzling the female, has also been reported. Here we use the expression 'apparent twins' to refer to reports of twin weddell seal pups that are based solely on field observations of two pups with the same adult female on several occasions.

The data arising from this study has been recorded in the form of 3 observations. These observations can be found in the referenced paper. A copy of this paper is available for download as a pdf document from the provided URL.