Pinnipeds in popular culture
Pinnipeds (from Latin pinna, wing or fin, and ped-, foot) or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals. Seals, sea lions, and walruses are popular pinnipeds in the media. They are often portrayed balancing beach balls on their noses and clapping with their flippers. At least three professional sports teams in the San Francisco, California area have been known as "the Seals".[1]
Notable fictional seals include
- Flynn, an elephant seal in Ice Age 4: Continental Drift
- Stefano, a sea lion in Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
- Hunter, a leopard seal in the Penguins of Madagascar
- Sophie, a circus seal whom Dr. Dolittle befriends and helps escape back to the ocean, in Doctor Dolittle's Circus ([1]) and also in Dr. Dolittle
- Lou Seal: mascot for the San Francisco Giants
- Leopard Seal, a leopard seal from Happy Feet
- Leopard Seal, a leopard seal in The Pebble and the Penguin
- Leopard Seal, a leopard seal from Eight Below
- Kotick: the main character in Rudyard Kipling's short story The White Seal, later made into a cartoon by Chuck Jones
- Salty a seal that appears in the Disney cartoons Pluto's Playmate and Mickey and the Seal and later in Mickey's Mouseworks and House of Mouse
- The title character of Andre
- Skæg, a seal sea captain in the Danish comics series Rasmus Klump.
- Slappy the sea lion from the film Slappy and the Stinkers
- Sully, a sea lion from Danger Rangers
- Whiskers from Manta and Moray
- Esmeralda the sea lion from the Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
- The San-X company characters Mamegoma
- Stinky Pete: Fictional cartoon character from the animated television series Sealab 2021
- The main characters of Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss
- Sparky, an escaped seal in the episode "Love and Sandy" from the 1964 television series Flipper
- An unnamed robotic seal in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit), who serves as the boss of the Aqua Lake Zone
- Pokémon creatures Popplio, Seel, Spheal, Sealeo and Walrein
- Wolfgang the Seal, former character from Sesame Street
- At the end of the fantasy novel Kitty and the Midnight Hour, there is a mention of Homo sapiens pinnipedia at the end; a wereseal. This mention is expanded upon in Kitty's House of Horrors, where the heroine meets a were-seal, Alaskan state legislator Lee.
- The Japanese version of the early Nintendo game Ice Climber featured enemy seals called Topis. Western versions changed them into yetis.
- Robby, friend of Pingu.
Because of the creature's name being coincidentally spelled the same as the unrelated word "seal" for a stamp, the confusion of one with the other is an occasional comic gag, as in "Christmas seal", or the live seal produced by Harpo Marx in Horse Feathers when Groucho Marx tries to find the legal seal for a contract document.
Notable fictional walruses include
- The Walrus from Lewis Carroll's poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter"
- Chumley, the walrus sidekick to Tennessee Tuxedo (the Penguin) [2]
- The Pokémon Walrein.
- Wally Walrus
- Kapitein Wal Rus, a sea captain in Tom Poes.
- Captain Thames in Xenogears
