Boris the walrus arrived in Quebec City with one job – help create baby walruses. And by all accounts, he has exceeded expectations.
Arnaliaq, a 12-year-old female walrus, is due any day now. Samka, a 10-year-old female, is expecting sometime in June.
Boris got both Arnie and Samka pregnant within weeks of each other. At their young ages, that is quite the feat.
“They're young animals and there hasn't been a lot of success at breeding these animals in accredited institutions, so we just didn't think it would happen so suddenly, and so successfully,” said Jill Marvin, the aquarium’s director of animal collections.
This is Boris, the expecting walrus dad.
The staff first started having suspicions back in the fall.
“We started seeing some signs and symptoms that maybe were related with pregnancy, but it wasn't until January when we could confirm 100 per cent from our super vet team that we actually had pregnancies in both of our females,” Marvin said.
As with humans, there's a risk – they don’t know if the pregnancies will go to term, but everything is going well so far.
The two expecting mothers are certainly getting all the food they need to satisfy their pregnancy cravings – they’ve gone from eating 18-20 kilograms a day to 35.
“It’s a mix of fish and seafood. We have mackerel, we have shrimp, oysters, squid and krill,” said trainer Jeannot Blanchet.
Based on what little data is available from other institutions around the world, this is an exceptional case. Marvin said they know of six healthy births in the last 10 years, but in North America, there hasn't been a single healthy birth in the last decade.
“And to our knowledge, never two females at the same time,” she said.
Walrus due dates are hard to estimate, but one thing is for sure – Arnie and Samka are expecting. They're eating much more than they used to, and they're a litte snappy with each other.
