{"id":604536,"date":"2026-08-25T21:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/604536\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T21:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:48:08","slug":"despite-weighing-a-massive-4-tonnes-this-mammal-can-dive-2000-metres-down-hold-its-breath-for-an-incredible-2-hours-and-even-control-its-heart-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/604536\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite weighing a massive 4 tonnes, this mammal can dive 2000 metres down, hold its breath for an incredible 2 hours and even control its heart rate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The gold medal for deep diving goes to a bull southern elephant seal, recorded at an incredible 2,388m, says Ellen Husain. While this is extreme, the species frequently dives to depths of 400\u2013800m, staying under for 20\u201330 minutes. <\/p>\n<p> Motivated by food, elephant seals plumb the depths for squid and rays, often at nutrient-rich boundary zones where different oceanic waterbodies meet.<\/p>\n<p>Since it takes time to get down, hunt and resurface, these seals have astounding breath-holding abilities \u2013 up to two hours is known. They can carry three times more oxygen in their blood than humans, also storing it in their tissues.<\/p>\n<p> So the precious oxygen lasts even longer, the seals lower their heart rate to slow the pace at which it is used, and are able to tolerate very low levels of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/blood-facts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">blood<\/a> oxygen at the end of dives.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gold medal for deep diving goes to a bull southern elephant seal, recorded at an incredible 2,388m,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-604536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}