(editor’s note: I don’t condone it, but I understand the physical reason why seals are clubbed rather than shot. I’m using clubbed as shorthand for killed, because that is the way that baby seals are killed. Does this note seem stupid and obvious? Yes, but I had to add it after the barrage of crazy comments that this post inspired.)

So last night I got to thinking about seals. Baby seals, to be specific. I realized that despite all those years of schooling, I have no idea why anyone would club a baby seal. People must do it, because so many people are up in arms about it. I understand that it’s a bad thing to do, but I can’t figure out why anyone would do it in the first place.

A lot of people feel strongly about not clubbing baby seals. It’s a cause everyone can get behind. You hear about it constantly, but have you ever seen anyone club a baby seal? Ever met anyone who’s clubbed a baby seal? Ever even met anyone who claims to know someone who clubbed a baby seal? Do people really club baby seals and why?

Is it like all the other stuff people do because they know it’s wrong? Do they do it for kicks? Like vandalism: kids don’t know why they do it, but they know it’s wrong so that makes it fun. Or something like that. That was Husband’s theory, anyway. I think he made it up so I’d quit asking him questions about this and let him watch Harry Potter in peace.

I don’t know anything about seals. Not a damned thing. Years of biology clases and nature shows, and what have I got to show for it? Obviously, we never covered this in class, or if we did I was busy reading something else or daydreaming and didn’t absorb a word. I’ve seen plenty of seals. I’ve seen them at the zoo. I’ve seen them at Sea World. I’ve never seen anyone club one. They do keep them penned up…maybe it’s for our protection, not theirs. Maybe they’re vicious and dangerous. Like penguins.

Oh, I’ve seen Nanook of the North plenty of times. For some odd reason there used to be a ritualistic viewing of it every year at a chemistry/physics honor society meeting. I have no idea why. That’s a mystery for another day, I think. Come to think of it, a greater mystery would be what I was doing in the chemistry honor society as an undergrad. Did I even take any chemistry classes? I must have…

I’m wondering now if I’m missing a year somewhere. Maybe this whole seal thing was explained to me in the same year I took chemistry classes I don’t remember taking? I’m getting off-track. Let’s get back to last night…

I presented a new theory to Husband. I’m from a tropical area that doesn’t have a lot of seals running around. Maybe clubbing seals just seems wrong to me because I don’t understand the issues.

“Maybe it’s like the gators.” I thought to myself. When I was a kid, if you opened the back door and there was a gator out there you didn’t call a hippie to sing folk songs to it. You called dad to blow it away with a shot gun.

“Maybe it’s like that with seals if you live among them,” I suggested to Husband. I asked him about his childhood. Did the seals ever come ashore and menace them while they were playing? Were they a threat? Did they steal their lunchs? Poop in their yards? Create mayhem?

After he paused the movie and stared at me in that way he stares at me when I’m off about something like this, he patiently explained to me that they didn’t have a lot of seals in New Jersey when he was a kid. And he also doubted this was why people clubbed them.

He thought it had something to do with eating them and wearing their fur. Right. I forgot some of the little buggers have fur. But I’ve never seen anyone wearing a seal fur coat, so I was still finding that explanation dubious. Because of course I wasn’t doing any research on the issue, I was just guessing.

So, it was off to the Internet to check this out. People eat them. They hunt them for sport. They wear them, too. But apparently they never club them in self-defense. Huh.

Brigitte Bardot digs seals. The Canadian Sealers Association has a slightly different take on the matter, particularly on their fact sheet. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has what they call a fact sheet, too.

There’s a seal cam, because apparently even people who study these darned things don’t know that much about them.

There’s a pretty good pinniped biology factsheet here. [dead link]

The Aland Museum in Finland [dead link] has an online exhibit on seal hunting. I still think clubbing the little critters is a bad thing, of course, but it makes more sense why people hunt them. Well, except the sport hunters. I still don’t get that.

PETA has a pretty good take on the whole situation (never thought you’d see me type those words all in a row, did you?) with their proposal to send American hunters to Norway to hunt seals. [dead link]

“Why would PETA aid and abet such a cruel scheme? Simple: If the Yank hunters embrace this primitive ritual with the same precision they apply in hunting here at home—namely, shooting each other and falling drunk out of trees—they’ll probably end up hitting each other over the head and disappearing through the ice, leaving the seal pups and their mothers to just sit back and enjoy the spectacle.”

So, it would appear that seals aren’t bloodthirsty beasts hell-bent on mayhem and destruction. People kill them to eat them, wear them, or for the sport of it. I’m still not understanding why it’s sporting to hunt seals, since it doesn’t seem like they move particularly fast on land, but then again, what do I know?

Maybe I don’t know anything about this whole seal clubbing thing (other than it’s bad) because I’m not crazy about seals. I like them and all, but they just aren’t that fascinating to me. It does crack me up that, according to the National Zoo site, “the grey seal’s scientific name Halichoerus grypus derives from the Greek words meaning “hook-nosed sea pig.” So that’s your fun seal fact for the day.

Oh yeah, and clubbing seals is wrong. Don’t do it. Unless they attack first, then all bets are off.