Today I Learned...

Northern elephant seals spend a few months out of the year ashore, breeding and molting, and not doing much eating. During this time, they sleep half the day away, ten or more hours at a lick.

The rest of the time they spend at sea, eating constantly. They're champion divers, with the females (who tend to forage farther out to sea, beyond the continental shelves, recorded diving to 3,000 feet or more in search of fish and squid.

While they're at sea, they only sleep about two hours a day, and they do that in ten-minute power naps as much as a thousand feet underwater, to avoid sharks and orcas.

Pretty wild.

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