SCIENCE LAB SCENICS : MATERNAL TIES

IN the Galapagos - some sea lions can't get enough of mother's milk. For most mammals,  growing up means giving up their mother's milk. Then there are the sea lions of the Galapagos Islands.

A long-running study has documented a significant number of sea lions in the Galapagos, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, that keeps suckling from their mothers for years after reaching sexual maturity.

One animal was spotted nursing at age 16m which, given the life expectancy of sea lions, would be akin to people in their early 60s still breastfeeding from their mothers.

So why has natural selection allowed those animals to keep returning to the milk bar? '' It's very hard, at the moment, for us to grasp,'' said Kruger, a behavioural ecologist in Germany, and a leader of the study.

Dr. Kruger leads the Galapagos Sea Lion Project, which, since 2003, has monitored a single population of the endangered pinnipeds.

This colony lives on the tiny Caamano Islet.

The Publishing continues to Part [ 2 ]. The World Students Society thanks Elie Dolgin.