Most of us know – life can be pretty tough if you’re different.   Recently, an adorable young seal found out the hard way that looks really do matter!

With reddish fur, pinkish flippers and beautiful blue eyes, the rare fur seal pup was shunned by his siblings and entire colony. Nearly blind, the young pup was waiting for his mama to come and feed him.  But she never came…

Nature photographer Anatoly Strakhov spotted the ginger-colored seal hiding under some logs on the beach in Tyuleniy Island, Russia, and snapped a few amazing pictures.   Left to fend for itself, the little pup was all alone.   One of Strakhov’s heart-wrenching photographs depicts the ostracized seal watching a large group of seals playing on the beach, as he sat all alone.

“As soon as I saw him I knew he was different, he had a very strange colour fur and looked different from his two black brothers,” Strakhov said. “When the seal saw me he turned his head to me as I took his picture.”

While a true albino seal has white fur and skin, this particular seal had albinistic features according to Dudley Wigdahl, the curator for mammals and birds at the Aquarium of the Pacific in California.    Its unusual coloring, which may be due to an accumulation of iron it its fur, makes the rare pup a prime target for predators.

Happy Ending for Rare Red-haired Seal Pup

But as luck would have it, a staff member from a dolphinarium was with Strakhov at the time.  The pup, estimated to be between three and four months old, has been taken to a Russian dolphinarium for care.  Please visit the links above for photos of this amazing seal.

Fur Seals

Hunted to near extinction, fur seals can live up to 30 years in the wild.  But extensive hunting, climate change and vulnerability to oil spills continue to threaten many fur sea populations.  Out of the nine species of fur seals listed on the IUCN Red List, two species are considered Near Threatened, one is listed as Vulnerable and one is Endangered.

Image of baby fur seal courtesy of Ville Miettinen