60 Fun Facts About Walrus

What is the walrus's scientific name?

Odobenus rosmarus. Linnaeus first filed the walrus with the seals, under Phoca, in 1758 and later moved it in with the manatees.

What is the term for a walrus leaving the water to rest on ice or land?

Hauling out. Walruses seldom do it alone: herds of thousands pack a beach or an ice floe side by side, and the crush of bodies helps each animal hold on to its heat.

The walrus's genus name comes from Greek words meaning what?

Tooth-walker. The name records the sight of a walrus hooking its tusks into the ice and heaving its bulk up out of the water.

The Dutch word behind 'walrus' is usually read as meaning what?

Whale-horse. Dutch seems to have flipped an older Norse name, 'horse-whale', and Old English had the same idea in its own word for the animal, horschwael.

What was the archaic English word for the walrus, still used in French?

Morse. It is the older English word: 'walrus' only arrived from Dutch in the 1650s, and morse still has cousins in French morse and Finnish mursu.

Which pinnipeds are the only ones that can grow larger than the walrus?

Elephant seals. Their bulls can reach four tonnes, about twice a big walrus bull, but neither species lives in the Arctic, so on its home ice the walrus has no rival for size among its kin.

The walrus belongs to which order of mammals?

Carnivora. Some schemes give walruses and their flippered kin an order of their own, Pinnipedia, but they are generally classed as carnivores, closer to weasels and bears than to the whales they share the sea with.

How long can a walrus tusk grow?

1 metre. Length settles most arguments: when two bulls square up they turn their heads to show their tusks side-on, and the one with the shorter pair usually backs away.

What do abrasion patterns show walruses actually use to dig prey from the seabed?

The upper edge of the snout. The tusks only trail through the mud as the walrus roots along the bottom, and it can also blast buried prey loose with jets of water squirted from its mouth.

What does a walrus mainly rely on to find food on the murky seabed?

Its whiskers. Eyes are little use in the gloom, so a walrus feels its way along the bottom with 400 to 700 stiff, nerve-rich bristles that tell it the size and shape of whatever they touch.

A bull walrus's hide is thickest where it shields him from what?

Other walruses. Breeding bulls stab at each other with their tusks in fights that leave many scarred and some dead, so the hide where the blows land grows thicker than anywhere else on the body.

Why can a swimming walrus appear almost white?

Its skin blood vessels constrict in cold water. Pulling warm blood away from the surface cuts the heat it loses to the sea, and it drains the skin of so much colour that the animal can look ghostly pale.

What lets a walrus sleep while floating upright?

An air sac under its throat. Pumped full of air it works like a life jacket, holding the walrus's head at the surface so it can doze bolt upright without sinking.

Polished and sold as a souvenir in Alaska, the walrus's half-metre penis bone goes by what name?

Oosik. The name comes straight from the Inupiaq word for the organ, and fossil ones are prized: polished up, they become knife handles and souvenirs sold to tourists across Alaska.

What are the 'bosses' that male walruses develop?

Nodules on the neck and shoulders. Females never grow them and males only from puberty, which is why researchers read the lumps as a sign of sex and maturity.

Which animal's pregnancy lasts even longer than the walrus's roughly 15 months?

Elephant. An African elephant carries her calf for about 22 months; the walrus gets to 15 partly because its embryo floats undeveloped for the first few months, which times the birth for spring.

At most, how often can a female walrus give birth?

Every two years. A pregnancy runs to 15 months and the calf then nurses for a year or more, so many mothers manage a calf only every third year, the slowest breeding rate of any pinniped.

Where does a walrus mother usually nurse her calf?

Out at sea. A calf nurses for about two years and simply tags along on its mother's feeding trips, drinking on demand whenever it is hungry.

In Inuit tradition, the sea's mammals, walruses among them in some tellings, sprang from the severed fingers of which goddess?

Sedna. Thrown from a boat, she clung to its side until her fingers were cut away, then sank to the seabed to rule the animals they became, and a distant world beyond Neptune now bears her name.

Through which narrow strait do Pacific walrus herds swim north each spring, following the retreating ice?

The Bering Strait. Mothers and calves drift north through it with the melting ice, from the Bering Sea into the Chukchi Sea, while many bulls skip the trip and spend the summer on beaches further south.

Besides fighting and display, what do walruses use their tusks for in thick winter ice?

Keeping breathing holes open. A walrus under the ice hammers upward with its tusks to break through, then works at the opening to stop it freezing over, so it can come up for air again.

How does a walrus get the meat out of a clam?

Sucks it from the shell. It clamps its lips on the clam and snaps its tongue back like a piston, and the vacuum pulls out the soft parts so cleanly that the empty shell just drops to the seabed.

Which director made Tusk, a 2014 horror film about a man surgically turned into a walrus?

Kevin Smith. He spun the plot out of a prank advert discussed on his podcast, in which a homeowner offered a free room to any lodger willing to dress up as a walrus.

Walruses do nearly all their feeding over which part of the ocean floor?

The continental shelf. The clams a walrus lives on grow in shallow water, so it usually feeds just 10 to 50 metres down and seldom below 80, a paddle next to the dives of its deep-diving relatives.

Apart from humans, the walrus's main natural predators are the polar bear and which other animal?

Orca. Neither hunter relies on walrus, and both mostly pick off calves, because a full-grown adult's bulk and tusks make it a dangerous thing to attack.

How do polar bears typically hunt walruses?

Stampeding herds, then taking the injured. Healthy adults are too big and well armed to tackle head-on, so a bear rushes a crowded beach and searches afterwards for young left crushed or stranded in the panic.

Mostly clam-eaters, some large bull walruses also kill and eat which other mammals?

Seals. The hunters are mostly big older males taking anything up to a 200 kg bearded seal, and they don't stop there: walruses have also been watched hunting seabirds.

The Walrus, a magazine of politics and culture, was launched in 2003 in which country?

Canada. Its Toronto founders wanted a home-grown answer to American magazines such as Harper's and The Atlantic, and it took 'Canada's Conversation' as its slogan.

Norway banned walrus hunting in 1952 when almost none were left around which of its Arctic islands?

Svalbard. Centuries of ivory hunting had left only a remnant, but under protection the herds have climbed back, to about 5,500 animals at the 2018 count.

Walruses once bred on which isolated sandbar 160 km southeast of Nova Scotia?

Colonies of 7,000-8,000 lived in the Gulf of St Lawrence into the 18th century before commercial harvest destroyed them.

A genetically distinct walrus population died out soon after Norse settlers reached which island?

Iceland. DNA from old bones shows a local lineage that vanished within centuries of the settlers' arrival, probably hunted out for its ivory, one of the earliest known cases of people wiping out a sea animal.

Arctic hunters traditionally stretched walrus hide over a driftwood frame to build which large open boat?

Umiak. With no keel, the boat was light enough for a few people to carry across the ice to open water, and among the animals its crews went out to hunt were walruses.

Explorer Nordenskiöld found walrus meat coarse but declared which part of the animal 'very delicious'?

The tongue. He wrote that walrus hunters ate the coarse, oily flesh only when they had to, yet the peoples of the Arctic coast he sailed past counted that same meat a delicacy.

Wally the walrus, first seen off Ireland in 2021, wandered as far south as which Spanish city?

Bilbao. From Spain he turned back north, and after he swamped small boats by clambering aboard for a rest, harbours in the Isles of Scilly and Ireland floated pontoons for him to lie on instead.

Freya, the walrus who toured the North Sea, was shot in August 2022 near which capital city?

Oslo. Officials had her shot after crowds kept pressing to within touching distance, and the following April a bronze statue of her, paid for by an online fundraiser, was unveiled in the city.

In 2021 a wandering walrus, later named Freya, was found dozing on a submarine of which country's navy?

The Netherlands. Of all the boats in the Den Helder naval base she picked HNLMS Dolfijn, which belongs to the Walrus class of submarines, as the Dutch navy was quick to point out.

Which MythBusters presenter is known for his beret and bushy walrus moustache?

Jamie Hyneman. The drooping style has carried the animal's name since the 1880s, and on the show his co-host Adam Savage turned it into a running joke.

Which pair of characters treat Alice to 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'?

Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Tweedledum picks it because it is the longest poem they know, and Tweedledee launches straight in, brushing aside Alice's plea to be shown the way out of the wood.

In Arctic lore from Siberia to Alaska, souls of the dead playing ball with a walrus skull appear as what?

The northern lights. In the Chukchi telling the aurora is a world set apart for people who met violent ends, and it is their ball game that sets its rays shifting across the sky.

The Lewis Chessmen, carved mostly from walrus ivory in the 12th century, were found in 1831 in which country?

Scotland. They turned up on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, but the carving style points to Norway, probably Trondheim, where a very similar chess piece has been found.

Disney's Alice in Wonderland borrowed 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' from which other Lewis Carroll book?

Through the Looking-Glass. There Alice says she likes the Walrus best for pitying his victims, only to be told he hid behind his handkerchief so that he could eat more than his partner.

What do the Walrus and the Carpenter trick into being eaten in Carroll's poem?

Oysters. The pair invite the young ones for a pleasant walk along the beach and then eat every one, the Walrus sobbing into his handkerchief as he sorts out the largest.

The Beatles' 'I Am the Walrus' was written by which member?

John Lennon. He borrowed the walrus from Lewis Carroll's poem and only later realised it was the villain of the piece, joking that he should have sung 'I am the carpenter'.

'I Am the Walrus' featured in which 1967 Beatles film?

Magical Mystery Tour. The song sat on the film's EP and on the B-side of 'Hello, Goodbye', so when those two records took the top two places in the UK chart it was at number one and number two at once.

In Kipling's Jungle Book tale 'The White Seal', the walrus Sea Vitch has manners only when he is what?

Asleep. The young seal Kotick wakes him anyway to ask for a beach safe from hunters, and gets an answer only after the gulls join in, jeering 'Clam-eater!' at the old walrus.

The 1539 Carta Marina, whose sea creatures include an early picture of a walrus, is a map of which region?

Scandinavia. Its maker, the exiled Swedish churchman Olaus Magnus, toiled over it for twelve years far from home and filled its seas with whales, walruses and monsters.

The Norse seafarer Ohthere brought walrus tusks as a gift to which English king?

Alfred the Great. In the late 800s Ohthere told the king he had sailed north chiefly for the walruses, because they had 'very noble bones in their teeth', and brought him some of the tusks.

Which trait does a walrus share with sea lions rather than with true seals?

Walking on all four flippers. A walrus can swing its hind flippers forward under its body as a sea lion does, yet once afloat it swims like a true seal, and like one it has no ear flaps.

As of its 2016 assessment, how does the IUCN Red List class the walrus as a species?

Vulnerable. Hunting is no longer the main worry: the listing reflects a warming Arctic, which is melting away the sea ice that walruses rest, breed and feed from.

In which Adam Sandler comedy is his character a Hawaiian marine vet who works with a walrus named Jocko?

50 First Dates. Henry Roth has spent ten years planning a voyage to study wild walruses in Alaska, and must choose between that trip and the woman who forgets him every night.

Wally Walrus, a slow-witted character with a Swedish accent, is the long-suffering foil of which cartoon bird?

Woody Woodpecker. Wally arrived in 1944 as the woodpecker's main enemy, but within a few years a new villain, Buzz Buzzard, had pushed him aside as Woody's chief foe.

The Walrus, a British amphibious biplane of the 1930s, came from the designer best known for which fighter?

Spitfire. Reginald Mitchell's team at Supermarine drew up both, and while his fighter took the glory, the catapult-launched Walrus spent the war fishing ditched airmen out of the sea.

An isolated walrus population, once named as a third subspecies, lives off which country's Arctic coast?

Russia. These walruses live in the Laptev Sea, off Siberia, and although they were described as a subspecies of their own in 1940, later study has shown them to be an offshoot of the Pacific walrus.

A walrus's tusks are overgrown versions of which teeth?

Canines. Cows grow them as well as bulls, and because the tusks are ivory they helped make the walrus a target for hunters, who cut its numbers sharply across the Arctic.

A newborn walrus calf already weighs about as much as which of these?

An adult human. At 45 to 75 kg the calf is born onto drifting sea ice during the spring migration, and it can swim from its very first day.

Walrus tusks were the main export of which medieval Norse colony?

Greenland: its Norse farmers sailed north to Disko Bay each summer to hunt walruses, then shipped the tusks to Europe, and one theory ties the colony's collapse to a later slump in their price.

Where do walruses mate, after the males court females resting on the winter ice?

In the water: bulls gather beside females resting on the ice and compete with clicking, bell-like calls made underwater, and a female who is won over slips in to join her suitor.

Which Netflix nature series filmed walruses falling from cliffs above an Arctic beach?

Our Planet: its makers later explained that the 2019 scene joins two beaches filmed in 2017, one carpeted with a vast herd of walruses and another where the animals fell from the cliffs.

Which part of the walrus do Alaska Native cooks traditionally ferment before eating it?

The flippers: fermented walrus flipper is a traditional Alaska Native dish, and one that health officials list among the foods behind Alaska's cases of botulism.

Around which Arctic island do many Pacific walruses spend the summer?

Wrangel, in the Arctic Ocean, was also the last refuge of the woolly mammoth: a herd survived there until about 4,000 years ago, thousands of years after the mainland mammoths died out.