Rather than wait on shore to mate within male-dominated harems, some female elephant seals engage in sex at sea, challenging the assumption that the species is exclusively polygynous.Nico de Bruyn at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and his colleagues analysed 25 years' worth of data from tagged southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina; pictured) living in the ocean around Antarctica. The data suggested that many females do not come ashore to mate. During the final decade of the study, the researchers followed the movements of 53 females after fitting them with satellite-tracking devices. This confirmed that two individuals gave birth despite not having come ashore to mate during the previous breeding season. One of these females was too far north at the time of conception to have mated on an ice floe, suggesting sexual encounters at sea.
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机译：一些雌性海象没有等到岸上去交配以雄性为主的后宫，而是在海上进行性交，挑战了该物种完全多性的假设。南非比勒陀利亚大学的Nico de Bruyn和他的同事分析了25年来自生活在南极洲附近海洋中的带有标签的南部象海豹（Mirounga leonina；如图）的数据。数据表明，许多雌性不上岸交配。在研究的最后十年中，研究人员在为53名女性安装了卫星跟踪设备后，对其进行了跟踪。这证实了两个人尽管在上一个繁殖季节没有上岸交配但仍生下了孩子。这些女性中有一个在受孕时距离北方太远，无法在浮冰上交配，表明在海上发生了性接触。
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