Tooth-walkers
Both males and females have tusks. They use them to haul themselves out onto the ice.
Arctic tundra
Walrus
Odobenus rosmarus
A huge, wrinkled, cinnamon-brown seal with long white tusks and a bristly moustache.
- Size
- Up to 3.5m long and over a tonne
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Shallow Arctic seas, hauling out on ice and beaches
Heaves itself after you on its flippers. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Walrus
Good to know
Six things about the walrus
A feeling moustache
About 400 stiff whiskers feel for clams on the dark sea bed.
Clam suckers
A walrus sucks the soft part of a clam out of its shell, and can eat thousands in one meal.
Pink in the sun
In cold water a walrus looks pale. In the sun, blood returns to the skin and it turns pink-brown.
Never alone
Walruses rest packed tightly together, in groups that can be thousands strong.
A thick coat of blubber
The blubber under its skin can be 10 centimetres thick.
The real thing
Photos of the walrus
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Walruses haul out at the same beaches every year. In Svalbard, boat trips watch them from a distance. One or two reach Britain most years.
How to help
Walruses panic easily and can crush each other in a rush for the sea. If one turns up on a British beach, stay well back and keep dogs away.
Keep going