{"id":772971,"date":"2026-07-01T08:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T08:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/772971\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T08:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T08:57:12","slug":"a-1000kg-mammal-is-wreaking-havoc-in-tasmania-and-neil-the-seal-is-loved-for-it-tasmania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/772971\/","title":{"rendered":"A 1,000kg mammal is wreaking havoc in Tasmania \u2013 and Neil the seal is loved for it | Tasmania"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bollards, traffic cones, fences and LandCruisers stand little chance against a one-tonne giant known as Neil the seal, now a local legend in southern Tasmania<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Neil \u2013 a five-year-old elephant seal \u2013 has once again taken up residence in Tasmanian towns. He\u2019s bypassing barricades, crushing fences, lying on roads and bashing into at least one parked car.<\/p>\n

In short, he\u2019s acting like an unruly teenager, play-fighting with seal stand-ins.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s probably not the fastest mover, but if he runs into a car or decides to put his nose up on the bonnet, it\u2019s not going to be too good,\u201d says Rod Macdonald, the mayor of Tasman council, which covers the area where Neil was born in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201c[But] he\u2019s certainly been a bit of a celebrity, and he continues to earn his status.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the independent Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie puts it, he\u2019s \u201cthe only bloke in Tasmania who can stop traffic, ignore everyone, and still be loved for it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dr Jane Younger, a senior lecturer and seal expert at the University of Tasmania, says Neil is just engaging in \u201cnormal seal behaviours\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s come back every year since he\u2019s been born, but he\u2019s bigger now,\u201d Younger says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe\u2019s like 1,000 kilos at this point, and he\u2019s obviously more capable of being a menace. He\u2019s broken fences, he\u2019s harassing people\u2019s cars \u2013 that\u2019s just a function of his size.\u201d<\/p>\n

Younger says he is only set to grow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe adult males are routinely more than 2 tonnes, the larger ones around three-and-a-half tonnes,\u201d she says. \u201cSo he could get much, much bigger than he is now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elephant seals are social creatures when they\u2019re on land, usually living in vast colonies during moulting and mating seasons.<\/p>\n

Neil is probably quite lonely \u2026 elephant seals often sleep in large clumps, squished up against each other. Photograph: neiltheseal316\/TikTok\u2018If we love seeing Neil, why not look after Neil\u2019s environment,\u2019 says Dr Clive McMahon. Photograph: neiltheseal316\/TikTok<\/p>\n

While most of the Australian populations live on Macquarie and Heard islands, thousands of kilometres south, Younger suspects Neil is likely the progeny of a young, inexperienced seal who ventured to Tasmania by mistake.<\/p>\n

Dr Clive McMahon, a marine ecologist who has worked with elephant seals for three decades, says Neil is on land for one of several \u201chaul outs\u201d that the creatures make each year. Neil appears to have come for a social visit and is likely to be around for six weeks or so. He\u2019s meant to encounter other young males, have some interaction and rest on shore.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he would normally encounter young males, they would spar with him, they would be training and \u2026 preparing themselves for when they\u2019re adults,\u201d says McMahon, a science and operations manager at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science.<\/p>\n

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\u201c[But] in the absence of other young males \u2026 he sort of has to learn his fighting behaviour or his social behaviours by doing things like sparring with bollards and traffic cones and various other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without those other young males, Neil is probably quite lonely.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, poor old Neil, he\u2019s probably looking for some of those things and is not really finding them,\u201d he adds, noting elephant seals will often sleep in large clumps, squished up against each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften when you see him sleeping, you\u2019ll see him squished up against a fence, and that\u2019s probably part of him wanting to feel that there\u2019s something else there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond Neil, elephant seals are facing some dire threats. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which monitors species\u2019 population numbers, recently decided to upgrade the southern elephant seal to \u201cvulnerable\u201d.<\/p>\n

The body made the shift after a wave of bird flu tore through four out of five major populations. In some colonies, more than 90% of seal pups died, including 13,000 on Heard Island alone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Macdonald says residents tend to make do when Neil hauls himself into town, working out a way \u201cto not get into too much trouble with him\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of his size now, he\u2019s a bit of a danger to damaging things,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Wildlife officials have urged people to say 20 metres away from Neil at all times, even if he\u2019s sleeping. Those with dogs should stay 50 metres away.<\/p>\n

McMahon says Tasmanians should embrace Neil\u2019s visits to Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we love seeing Neil, why not look after Neil\u2019s environment and ensure that his environment is safe,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess what I\u2019m saying is, us as humans should really embrace the fact that we have the privilege to learn as much as we can about elephant seals, and also about the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bollards, traffic cones, fences and LandCruisers stand little chance against a one-tonne giant known as Neil the seal,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-772971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}