Katie Florko
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Nice work, partner.
Thank you for having me.
What's not to love?
Seals are such a cool animal.
They're mesopredators.
That's what we call middle predators.
So that means that they are predators.
You know, they eat fish and invertebrates.
And so they're the source of fear for many animals.
But they are also prey themselves.
to polar bears primarily.
And so they're balancing both of these sides of the equation.
They're balancing finding food and avoiding becoming food.
So they're a really cool animal.
It definitely is more complicated.
There's nuances to these relationships, of course, but relatively, it's a pretty simple system compared to other systems.
So seals are the main prey.
These ring seals are the main prey of polar bears and polar bears are the main predator of the ring seal.
So it is a really tight relationship between those two.
So it's a really good study system to answer these ecological questions.