[[feature article]]
Friday, January 11, 2008, 9:46:00 PM
[WARNING! the information to be presented below is only for the strong at heart. reader discretion is adviced.]magazine: national geographic.
target audience: everyone and anyone.
purpose: to use an example to show people the beauty of the animal kingdom in order to reduce poaching of animals in the wild.
Have you ever bought an item made out of an animal's fur or skin? Maybe you should reconsider before buying anymore of these items. After all, many animals have already been sacrificed just because of human greed and some of the animal's numbers are even declining drastically. One of these animals is the harp seal.
The ice-breeding harp seal, found in waters of the Arctic and far north Atlantic Ocean, obtains its name from the horseshoe or harp-shaped pattern on the back and sides of the adults of the species.
These beautiful and gentle harp seals have the unfortunate status of being the marine mammal species on the planet that suffers the largest slaughter annually. The reported total number of harp seals killed during the 1999 season was 244,552.
People hunt the harp seals mainly for their pelt. The "hunter" usually tries to dispatch the seal before killing and skinning them. Some of these methods include kicking them in the face and beating the babies on the head with clubs or hakapiks. After which, the sealer proceeds to skin the animal. The facts show that about 40% of the seals are actually skinned alive. Adults and resisting mothers are sometimes also shot, clubbed, skinned and in the case of males, have their penis bones removed. If convenient to do so, some of the bodies are then recovered and processed into pet food or used to feed the animals in fur farms.
The harp seal pups are not the only ones that moult or shed their fur. Each year, beginning in early April, harp seals moult too. Adult and younger males moult first, followed by adult females, which start to moult about the third week of April after giving birth to their pups. During the approximately 4 weeks of moulting, harp seals rarely feed and as a result lose more than 20% of their body weight mainly in the form of fat. After they have moulted, adults and young males migrate to their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic, thus completing their annual cycle.
After reading some facts about the harp seal, please think twice before you buy any products made out of animal parts.
"When the buying stops, the killing can too."
1 comments:
A great topic. Good research done.
All the paragraphs are relevant except the one providing information about moulting. You can delete that paragraph and your article would still work fine.
by 
, @
January 13, 2008 at 11:49 AM