Doll's Head Swallowed — Zoo Mourns the Loss of Its Last Maned Seal

A maned seal has died at a Czech zoo after swallowing the head of a toy doll. This was revealed by the postmortem examination of the marine mammal, according to a statement from the zoo in Liberec. The foreign object was discovered at the junction of the stomach and the small intestine. Zookeepers had found Hugo, a 17-year-old male, lifeless in his enclosure on Saturday morning.

Hugo was the last remaining maned seal at the zoo in the northern Bohemian city. Animals of this species have been kept there since 1975. Maned seals, also known as Patagonian sea lions or South American sea lions, are native to South America, where they live along both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Liberec is located about 90 kilometers northeast of Prague and just under 100 kilometers east of Dresden.

As the zoo further reported, the damaged body of the toy doll had already been fished out of the sea lion pool two days earlier. However, there was no indication that Hugo had swallowed any parts of the object. He had been eating normally. Furthermore, anesthesia for X-ray or ultrasound examinations always carries a high risk for older animals. 

Not the first time

This is not the first incident of this kind: In 2009, the male seal Nico swallowed a large rock that a zoo visitor had thrown into the pool. The animal did not survive emergency surgery. About twenty years ago, a postmortem examination found 7.5 kilograms of foreign objects in the stomach of the male seal Felix, as reported by the Czech news agency CTK.

Despite the unexpected death, the zoo plans to continue the renovation of the seal enclosure, which has been underway since spring. The zoo will now assess whether additional safety measures need to be taken in addition to installing more surveillance cameras. It is still unclear when new animals will be able to move in. In any case, the new animals are unlikely to be maned seals but rather California sea lions, which are more commonly kept in zoos.