A gray seal that was found stranded and blind on a Maine island more than a decade ago has given birth at a Chicago-area zoo and is now a “very caring” animal to her newborn baby. “She is now a mother,” zoo officials announced Friday.
The 11-year-old seal, named Georgie, gave birth to a 35-pound male pup at Brookfield Zoo on February 17th. Zoo officials say she has gained 15 pounds in her first week of life drinking her mother’s rich milk and is practicing swimming in the pool.
Georgie was found stranded on an island near Georgetown, Maine, near the Atlantic Ocean in 2013, and was found to be blind in her left eye and functionally blind in her right eye.
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Because of her visual impairment, National Marine Fisheries Service officials determined she could not be released back into the wild. She arrived at the Brookfield Zoo west of downtown Chicago in 2020.
A mother seal raises her pup at the Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Illinois. (Jim Schultz/Brookfield Zoo, via AP)
However, Georgie’s vision loss has not affected her ability to care for her newborn. Georgie has been raising puppies, and she has proven to be a “very attentive mother,” said Mark Goenka, the zoo’s deputy director of marine mammal care and conservation. Ta.
“Grey seals have a keen sense of smell and a repertoire of calls. Georgie is able to locate her pup by using its unique scent and calls,” Gonka said in a statement.
Like Georgie, the pup’s father, a 23-year-old gray seal named Kiinaku, was stranded in the wild when he was just a few months old and was deemed unable to be released.
Brookfield Zoo said the new pups, born to wild parents, contribute to increasing the genetic diversity of gray seal populations in North American accredited zoos and aquariums.
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The zoo says gray seals face threats including entanglement in fishing gear, illegal hunting, chemical pollutants and climate change.
