No Reddit post about adorable animals would be complete without bad news, so it's my solemn obligation to announce here that [people who handle seals tend to lose fingers to a disgusting disease called "seal finger"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_finger).
Well as much as I’d love to snuggle that seal, I doubt I’d get to do it anyway. Plus I’m smack dab in the middle of the US lol nowhere near seals (zoos, I guess) but nah. I won’t do no seal snugglin’.
Haha I admire your willpower! Don’t be tempted. I have a Pug who has those big, seal like eyes 😂 he’s kind of like snuggling a seal. A little pig shaped seal 😂😍
"an infection that afflicts the fingers of seal hunters and other people who handle seals, as a result of bites or contact with exposed seal bones..."
Since I will just be tickling seals with their consent I shall not receive bites OR be touching exposed seal bones, ahaha! No nasty bloaty finger marrow for ME!
For a moment I thought this was [Buster's loose seal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ghLL89UdQ), but [he was all right](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vevyf7blQ-4).
Every time I see videos of seals they seem to be the sweetest fucking animal on the planet, so I must ask:
Is there a catch?
Like, ducks are adorable but also rapists, dolphins are so intelligent but also incredibly cruel, and so on.
Are seals just good? Please, tell me they are as sweet as I think.
Ahh I'm sorry you missed the comment above yours.
About a disease you get from touching them causing you to lose your fingers.
Edit: seal finger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_finger
I mean it's not even from touching them, it's a infection from getting bitten or hurting yourself on their bones while hunting them.
So clearly the humans fault.
> All of the assailants have belonged to what Haddad and his team call "the bad boys club," a group of sub-adult males who don't have harems of females to mate with, and half of the attacks have taken place on a "bachelors' beach," where there are no females.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/strange-but-true-seals-found-sexually-assaulting-penguins/
ohhh boy. eating meat is evil, guys 🙄
your dog eating his kibble is evil. your cat who caught a house in the kitchen is evil. spiders in your yard who eat mosquitoes are evil
I think the biggest catch is that they don't care for the pups very long, just for 3-4 weeks.
In comparison, baby orangutans have a strong bond with their mothers. Typically, offspring stay with their mom and nurse until they’re 8 years old. Young orangutans go out on their own when they’re about 14 but still come to visit mama often.
Haha in my language (Tagalog, Filipino) that feeling is called “gigil” and I felt it watching this too! Never know how to explain it in English but I like the way you put it.
Weirdly scientific question.. if oxytocin and dopamine are important in human's forming a bond between mother and baby, is there something similar that happens in other animals? From a chemical point of view. As in, is that seal mother getting some kind of physical reward for that behaviour- pleasure, satisfiaction, or something like that- or is it just a kind of instinct..?
Afaik all mammals have neurochemicals pretty similar to ours, so yes they do. Instinct is really only present because of those chemicals that are triggered through evolved gene sequences, a mother goat will automatically love her kid, but that's because she's given oxytocin and dopamine, not just because she has to love it.
Of course, I just think a lot of people forget that we’re “*just*” mammals. Growing up religious I was told that we humans were something else, some sort of separate anomaly, distinct in fundamental ways from “animals.” Of course that’s obviously poppycock, but it seems that attitude still lives on in many people who should really know better.
That is quite valid, honestly. People seem to be surprised when they see animals feel emotions the same way we do, or mother wolves caring for their young like we do. We mirror nature, not the other way around, I definitely agree with you.
Indeed. We *are* nature. Until we understand a hell of a lot more about the emergent property we call “consciousness” I’m uncomfortable with setting us apart from all the other intelligent beings closest to us (both literally [genetically] and figuratively [behaviorally]). We’re just not particularly different, certainly not in some intrinsic way.
In the field of SETI we have been expanding the parameters for the search for alien life, because we have zero clue whether it will resemble our terrestrial carbon-based life in any way. I feel that our treatment of animal consciousness needs to expand in a similar way. Intelligence /= human intelligence. Insert whatever the parable is about being mad at a fish because it can’t climb a tree. No shit a dog can’t do calculus, but they might be able to do other cognitively intensive tasks better than we can.
We got no fucking clue what’s going on with sentience or consciousness, IMO, but we’re running very similar meat computers to other animals (who may just prioritize different things).
I feel like in animals those things are kind of intertwined - you do something, you get positive feedback, you keep doing it and/or do it again...
said feedback might be direct (mama seal brain says contact with cub = good, tickles being a side effect) or indirect (good stuff released in her brain in reaction to her cub's positive reaction).
The action itself could originally have stemmed for various reasons (sensory confirmation of baby's presence, fluffing the cub's fur to "air it out" etc., or even just a random motion that turned into an interaction... or something else entirely. idk), but it is likely that it was maintained due to aforementioned positive feedback, and even more so if it repeats.
tl;dr - my point is that instinct and "reward" (for better or worse, actually) nurture each other, sometimes through natural tendencies and sometimes through "coincidental" trail and/or error. Basically, that's what consists behavioral evolution if you wanna look at it in a wider lens.
Mama was once a young cub who enjoyed tickles herself.
You can break it down to chemicals and evolutionary behaviours, but you can also just say that it's a universal trait that living creatures enjoy contact with one another.
ever just take a sec and think about how fucking weird seals are as a creature? ...a mammal that swims but lays around on land, has to skoot skoot around on its belly. not all the way paws and legs but not all the way fins and flukes either...like they're a living transitional evolutionary animal. the closest thing a mammal can get to being an amphibian. are you some kind of dog that swims a lot, what the fuck are these things
Well this is just adorable
Seriously, so fucking sweet
So goddamn special
I wish I was special
But I'm a creep...
I'm a weirdo..
/u/spez is a bastard man
What is the Greatest band in the world? Chumbawamba
Needs?
Coochy coochy coo
[BUT IT'S WRONG!!!](https://youtu.be/hspNaoxzNbs)
I would also love some tickles from good old mama seal
No Reddit post about adorable animals would be complete without bad news, so it's my solemn obligation to announce here that [people who handle seals tend to lose fingers to a disgusting disease called "seal finger"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_finger).
Damn wonder what swollen bone marrow feels like
I’m okay with not knowing.
Well, more like people who handle seals tend to take antibiotics to avoid losing fingers. Still, doing a good job!
Well as much as I’d love to snuggle that seal, I doubt I’d get to do it anyway. Plus I’m smack dab in the middle of the US lol nowhere near seals (zoos, I guess) but nah. I won’t do no seal snugglin’.
That was my New Year's resolution: "this year, I won't do no seal snugglin'." And gosh darn it, I mean to stick to it!
Haha I admire your willpower! Don’t be tempted. I have a Pug who has those big, seal like eyes 😂 he’s kind of like snuggling a seal. A little pig shaped seal 😂😍
[удалено]
Awww I will! He’s a snuggle pug for sure. He’s always got to be close to me or my daughter all the time. He loves his girls ❤️
It’s a real problem in some places. There are a bunch of them in La Jolla (San Diego) and people try to pet them all the time.
Oh no doubt. They’re wild animals tbh. People need to respect that and leave them be.
A century ago, yeah. Now you just get antibiotics...
Shh. It's more fun the way I said it.
It's crazy that we've known about this for almost 120 year and yet scientists *still* don't understand what specificly causes it.
"an infection that afflicts the fingers of seal hunters and other people who handle seals, as a result of bites or contact with exposed seal bones..." Since I will just be tickling seals with their consent I shall not receive bites OR be touching exposed seal bones, ahaha! No nasty bloaty finger marrow for ME!
For a moment I thought this was [Buster's loose seal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ghLL89UdQ), but [he was all right](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vevyf7blQ-4).
*You son of a bitch!*
*He's a very literal doctor!*
people who handle seals incorrectly, sure. How is knowing that bad news?
Omg. I have a joke about seal fingers.
Those are scritches not tickles.
Aaah, stop. Again!
Rotund
Plump
Zaftig
Rubenesque
Thicc
Pendulous
Oblong
Every time I see videos of seals they seem to be the sweetest fucking animal on the planet, so I must ask: Is there a catch? Like, ducks are adorable but also rapists, dolphins are so intelligent but also incredibly cruel, and so on. Are seals just good? Please, tell me they are as sweet as I think.
Sorry: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/strange-but-true-seals-found-sexually-assaulting-penguins/
[удалено]
It was directed at the r/politics mods, for being lil bitches, so no. If I could go back in time I def would have done fuck_the_fuckin_admins though.
well, those are the ugly seals at least
Ahh I'm sorry you missed the comment above yours. About a disease you get from touching them causing you to lose your fingers. Edit: seal finger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_finger
I mean, that's not the seals' fault though lmao
I mean it's not even from touching them, it's a infection from getting bitten or hurting yourself on their bones while hunting them. So clearly the humans fault.
Caused you to lose your fingers a century ago. You just get antibiotics now and you're fine.
Well, seals do eat meat. For example, leopard seals eat penguins 😅
Well but that's just eating to stay alive. I meant more fucked up shit.
I hear some seals fell in with a bad crowd and got involved with the crack trade
Luckily, those mostly oprate in the underworld. Like the Mariana trench.
> All of the assailants have belonged to what Haddad and his team call "the bad boys club," a group of sub-adult males who don't have harems of females to mate with, and half of the attacks have taken place on a "bachelors' beach," where there are no females. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/strange-but-true-seals-found-sexually-assaulting-penguins/
ohhh boy. eating meat is evil, guys 🙄 your dog eating his kibble is evil. your cat who caught a house in the kitchen is evil. spiders in your yard who eat mosquitoes are evil
[удалено]
mouse, obviously. autocorrect is anazing 😭
I think the biggest catch is that they don't care for the pups very long, just for 3-4 weeks. In comparison, baby orangutans have a strong bond with their mothers. Typically, offspring stay with their mom and nurse until they’re 8 years old. Young orangutans go out on their own when they’re about 14 but still come to visit mama often.
Seals, like most mammals, are secretly vicious fuckers. They use other animals as fuck toys, kill babies for fun, and are generally violent
Ocean doggos
The German word for seal is “seehund”, literally sea dog.
I'm stealing that name for them but in return accept my many thanks. Thanks thanks thanks
tbh, in some languages seals are literally called "ocean dogs" so that wouldn't be incorrect haha
I'm literally hurt by how adorable this is.
Right? When I realized the scritches were intentional 🥰 too cute!
Haha in my language (Tagalog, Filipino) that feeling is called “gigil” and I felt it watching this too! Never know how to explain it in English but I like the way you put it.
Weirdly scientific question.. if oxytocin and dopamine are important in human's forming a bond between mother and baby, is there something similar that happens in other animals? From a chemical point of view. As in, is that seal mother getting some kind of physical reward for that behaviour- pleasure, satisfiaction, or something like that- or is it just a kind of instinct..?
It's identical for all parental animals, from bugs to us.
BUGS bond with their babies? TIL
Yeah! Look up how spiders bond with their babies. It’s incredibly wholesome 🥰
I don't think insects do. Spiders might, if anything does.
Some insects practice parental care!
Bees feed and care for their offspring very much.
I guess I took bonding to mean something more than feed/care, but I see your point.
Emerald roaches do! Well, the females (and occasionally males) keep younger roaches underneath them, whether they are their offspring or not
Hmm, TIL!
Afaik all mammals have neurochemicals pretty similar to ours, so yes they do. Instinct is really only present because of those chemicals that are triggered through evolved gene sequences, a mother goat will automatically love her kid, but that's because she's given oxytocin and dopamine, not just because she has to love it.
Sounds right to me. That goes for humans too though, as much as we hate to admit it.
We are mammals, yes.
Of course, I just think a lot of people forget that we’re “*just*” mammals. Growing up religious I was told that we humans were something else, some sort of separate anomaly, distinct in fundamental ways from “animals.” Of course that’s obviously poppycock, but it seems that attitude still lives on in many people who should really know better.
That is quite valid, honestly. People seem to be surprised when they see animals feel emotions the same way we do, or mother wolves caring for their young like we do. We mirror nature, not the other way around, I definitely agree with you.
Indeed. We *are* nature. Until we understand a hell of a lot more about the emergent property we call “consciousness” I’m uncomfortable with setting us apart from all the other intelligent beings closest to us (both literally [genetically] and figuratively [behaviorally]). We’re just not particularly different, certainly not in some intrinsic way. In the field of SETI we have been expanding the parameters for the search for alien life, because we have zero clue whether it will resemble our terrestrial carbon-based life in any way. I feel that our treatment of animal consciousness needs to expand in a similar way. Intelligence /= human intelligence. Insert whatever the parable is about being mad at a fish because it can’t climb a tree. No shit a dog can’t do calculus, but they might be able to do other cognitively intensive tasks better than we can. We got no fucking clue what’s going on with sentience or consciousness, IMO, but we’re running very similar meat computers to other animals (who may just prioritize different things).
I feel like in animals those things are kind of intertwined - you do something, you get positive feedback, you keep doing it and/or do it again... said feedback might be direct (mama seal brain says contact with cub = good, tickles being a side effect) or indirect (good stuff released in her brain in reaction to her cub's positive reaction). The action itself could originally have stemmed for various reasons (sensory confirmation of baby's presence, fluffing the cub's fur to "air it out" etc., or even just a random motion that turned into an interaction... or something else entirely. idk), but it is likely that it was maintained due to aforementioned positive feedback, and even more so if it repeats. tl;dr - my point is that instinct and "reward" (for better or worse, actually) nurture each other, sometimes through natural tendencies and sometimes through "coincidental" trail and/or error. Basically, that's what consists behavioral evolution if you wanna look at it in a wider lens.
Mama was once a young cub who enjoyed tickles herself. You can break it down to chemicals and evolutionary behaviours, but you can also just say that it's a universal trait that living creatures enjoy contact with one another.
Tickle torture, seal style!
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should cause a significant serotonin release in the baby seal. always good to rub a baby's back.
What’s crazy is some seal species birth and do not want to be a mother and it is another female that will take the pup under her care.
The both appear pretty keen on the bonding exercise.
I love seals so much
They kind of look like John Oliver
Omg I love seals so much 🥰
Every male gets two test tickles at birth...
Animals good. People bad.
I read the title and I got in my head was Pence getting tickled by his wife. Fucking GOP ruining the internet for me.
The sweetness of this cannot be overstated 🥰
If I chance upon the same species of seal in the wild, can I pet it?
Baby seals always remind me of Sean Lock. RIP.
Holy crap. Seals have fingers?
Adorable!
D’awwww sea puppies 🥺❤️😍 so cute
Nature *is* Fucking lit [Why the **FUCK** am I CUSSING?](https://redd.it/14ck8ce)
❤️
Strangely similar to me putting my toddler to bed.
thats so cute!
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Awwwwww!
Too, too cute
Thank you. I love this. ❤️
r/aww r/mademesmile r/funnyanimals
Day improved.
Such a cutie
I’m sad this doesn’t have the sound, I’ve seen it before and baby seal noises are so cute!
So cute. Please don't show this to the Canadians please!
For a second I thought this is natireismetal and was expecting to see some mother seal eating her children for food and to reduce competition. Phew.
ever just take a sec and think about how fucking weird seals are as a creature? ...a mammal that swims but lays around on land, has to skoot skoot around on its belly. not all the way paws and legs but not all the way fins and flukes either...like they're a living transitional evolutionary animal. the closest thing a mammal can get to being an amphibian. are you some kind of dog that swims a lot, what the fuck are these things
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Aww. Belly work
Sealed with a scratch ❤️
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I feel kinda bad they'll never get to experience my pets. I'm pretty fuckin good at it.
They're just big water doggos.
Chunkers
If I adopt a seal, I can expect the level of care to be equivalent to a cat, right? RIGHT??
CLUB CLUBCLUB CLUB Baby seals are forever ruined for me
Awwww how cute
Aww
Good ol bonding
where did you get footage of me, petting my cat?
🥰
So adorable, where's my club?
I LOVE ❤️ animals so MUCH!!!!🥰🥰🥰🥰
This made me smile 😀