I was reading something about jigsaw puzzles that reminded me of a very difficult puzzle I did a long time ago that consisted of a white baby seal on an ice floe. Almost the entire puzzle was shades of white with just the seal’s eyes and nose being black. The image below is not from the puzzle but you can see why such a puzzle would be difficult.

While thinking about it, I was reminded of the cruel practice of killing baby seals, usually by beating their heads in with clubs, because their white fur is valuable.

The Canadian Marine Mammal Regulations that govern the hunt stipulate sealers may kill seals with wooden clubs, hakapiks (large ice-pick-like clubs) and guns. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, clubs and hakapiks are the killing implement of choice, and in the Front, guns are more widely used (though clubs are frequently used at the Front to kill seals that have been shot and wounded).

It is important to note that each killing method is demonstrably cruel. Because sealers shoot at seals from moving boats, the pups are often only wounded. The main sealskin processing plant in Canada deducts $2 from the price they pay for the skins for each bullet hole they find-therefore sealers are loath to shoot seals more than once. As a result, wounded seals are often left to suffer in agony-many slip beneath the surface of the water where they die slowly and are never recovered.

This seems extremely cruel to me and I was surprised that the practice is still allowed.

A question occurred to me that had I had not thought of before and that was why baby seals are born white but adults are black. This reference source says that “Harp seal pups are born with long white fur that helps them absorb sunlight and stay warm while they’re still developing blubber. Pups shed their white fur after about three to four weeks old.”

But that puzzled me since white reflects sunlight while black absorbs it.

But other sources suggest that it is because the white fur enables them to better camouflage themselves during the first few weeks when they are confined to land to avoid predators, but they turn black after about four weeks when they start to spend time in the dark oceanic water.

As pups, harp seals go through several distinct stages. At birth they weigh about 10 kg (22 lb) and are called yellowcoats because their fur is stained yellow from amniotic fluid. After a few days, the yellowish tint disappears and their fur turns pristine white.
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During the first three or four weeks of their lives, seal pups cannot swim because their fur is not yet waterproof. As their mothers hunt (sometimes for as long as three hours at a time), the pups are left alone on the ice and tend to stay still in an attempt to blend into their environment. However, they remain easy prey because their mothers are unlikely to come to their rescue if they’re attacked. Once the pups have weaned, they’re left to fend for themselves on a regular basis as the adult females begin to mate.

The idea that white fur helps baby seals hide from their natural predators such as polar bears, foxes, and wolves makes more sense to me. Unfortunately, human predators are not that easily fooled.