An elephant seal mother and pup nuzzle to learn each other’s smell. Before weaning at about three weeks, the 90-pound (40-kilogram) newborn could triple its weight, while the nursing mother may lose a third.
Saturn, an elderly mother herself, cares for two calves orphaned by the deaths of their mothers, who were her adult daughters. The extended family structure helps groups cope with such losses. At sunset along a river channel Saturn oversees the play of her own two calves and the orphans. From her behavior alone, uniformly doting, you couldn’t know which was which.
Members of the gastropod class, finger-size nudibranchs live fully exposed, their gills forming tufts on their backs. (Nudibranch means "naked gill," a feature that separates them from other sea slugs.).
