'Bleak' future for seals

The world's largest species of seal has been devastated by bird flu, which has wiped out half of all breeding females at a key wildlife haven near Antarctica, scientists warned yesterday.

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The remote island of South Georgia is the home of a majority of all southern elephant seals. Males of these blubbery giants can grow up to 2m long, weigh nearly 4 tons - and have a distinctive elephant-trunk-like proboscis on their face that earned the mammals their name.