During breeding time Antarctic fur seals have uncanny ability to return to where they themselves were born

Extreme natal philopatry in female Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella)

Joseph Ivan Hoffman and  Jaume Forcada

 Mammalian Biology  doi:10.1016/j.mambio.2011.09.002

Scientists led by Dr Joe Hoffman from the University of Bielefeld in Germany have discovered that majority of female Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) give birth to pups within 2 metres of where they themselves were born

The truly amazing fact is that these seals may have spent up to five years feeding hundreds of kilometres out at sea before coming home.

The scientist quantified fine-scale patterns of natal philopatry in an intensively studied colony of Antarctic fur seals, where a scaffold walkway allows individual locations to be measured to the nearest metre. Using subcutaneous PIT tags, they tracked the early life histories of 335 females born within the colony, of which 38 were resighted as breeding adults.

The researchers  found that individual females returned to as little as one body length (2 m) of their birth locations. Distances between natal and pupping sites were not correlated with female age, but tended to decrease with the number of seasons an individual was sighted ashore. The researchers say this suggests that breeding experience may be a better predictor than age of the ability of females to occupy preferred sites within fur seal colonies.