Elephant seals have remarkable life histories with extreme sexual selection driving brutal male competition and long fasting periods, while climate change increasingly affects prey availability and reproductive success.
Male elephant seal competition for breeding access involves serious injuries including deep lacerations from canine teeth, internal injuries, and occasionally fatal outcomes in peripheral or exhausted combatants. This competitive violence is natural rather than welfare-relevant in the usual sense — it is the evolved reproductive strategy of the species. What is welfare-relevant is how climate change is affecting the energetics of survival. Pups that fail to learn efficient foraging strategies during their first independent year face starvation. Adults returning from migration to depleted foraging grounds cannot replenish fat reserves adequately. The physiological stress of fasting combined with reduced prey availability creates compound welfare challenges that climate projections suggest will worsen. Conservation of elephant seal prey communities is as important as direct protection.