A SEAL ASLEEP

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3894, 26 April 1937, Page 6

A SEAL ASLEEP

ITS STRANGE ATTITUDE Nature has many strange ways of sending her children to sleep. For example, the bat, hanging by its feet, sleeps head downwards. The horse, on the other hand, will often fail asleep while standing upright. A young seal’s method of getting “forty winks” is also worthy of note, states a writer in an English journal. “I visited an isolated reef which was, for the time being, the home of a big number of seals. A lively interest was taken in our approach, and, although they were not unduly afraid, they kept at a safe, distance from the boat. “About to land on the rocks, we observed what appeared to be a dead seal floating quite near to the shore. Floating low in the water, its head hanging down through the sea, it appeared to be perfectly lifeless. “To see if the ‘body’ bore marks of conflict, we turned it over—and got the surprise of our lives. The seal, whose slumber we had disturbed, awoke, sensed danger, and —was off like a flash. In Nature’s school, where a split second may save, your life, one barns to act. “Whether keeping ‘on the water’ is a common habit among the seals I do not know. I can only vouch for the fact that this one appeared to be comlfortably asleep with his head completely submerged.”