Abandoned Baby Seal Pups

Countless species on Earth have to deal with the dire consequences of global warming, from the polar bears marooned on floating chunks of ice, to the abandoned baby seal struggling to grow and survive in a wetter and windier Antarctic climate. In fact, these two species are perfect case studies of how the environment is becoming unstable and unsuitable for much of the current hierarchy in the food chain. Especially the abandoned baby seal pups.

Like human babies, pups have vast energy requirements in the beginning months of life. Unlike toddlers, pups employ it to grow and learn quickly because they need to be independent from their mother much sooner. The problem is that as climate change brings unfavorable weather, they have to divert it to keeping warm instead. Pups and much smaller, lack the full blows insulation of adulthood, and in order to regulate body temperature their conserving energy uncharacteristically.

Climate Change and a Mighty Change of Guard

It’s quickly getting to the point where ice is disappearing altogether in places where it has existed for millennia, and showing up in areas it hasn’t been for just as long. Some species are adapting, while other aren’t. Studies show that currently, the eco-sphere is experiencing another drastic die-off period. Through the butterfly effect, each abandoned baby seal is like a herald of warning for all of us.

Whether we’re seeing huge swaths of animals die suddenly for no apparent reason, or other species that rely on the magnetosphere losing their way, animals are great signifiers that something’s definitely wrong. The top of the food chain is being tested, and in a generation from now, those on top could have changed a bit.

Not Always a Case of Abandonment

Just because it looks like an abandoned baby seal, doesn’t necessarily mean it is one. At certain times during the year it’s perfectly normal for pups to be on their own; either because the mother is out hunting and fishing for food, or because she has rejected it due to the fact that it has gotten old enough to take care of itself.

Regardless, pictures of animals in distress from the Amazonian jungles or rainforests, to the forested or glacial environments, everything seems under strain. Even humanity itself, and all of the systems that govern it, from free market economics and democracy, to infrastructure and food production, is stressed almost to the point of breaking.

2012 and Global Abandonment

Will modern industrialized nations throw up their hands? Can the powers that be handle and navigate through both a worldwide economic depression and drastic levels of climate change? Like the abandoned baby seal, is Mother Nature rejecting humanity because we’ve grown beyond its means of sustaining us? The Earth is getting hotter, month by month, and increased tropical storms, droughts, and financial impacts are making dents in the human vehicle of evolution.

Humans don’t have the luxury of conserving energy and sacrificing the portion that’s to go to intellectual growth.