Understanding seal behaviour

Dr Sean Twiss has been studying seal behaviour for 30 years and has recently featured on the BBC's Winterwatch programme. Here Dr Twiss, of the Department of Biosciences , tells us more about his latest research and why seals are as individual as we are. Tell us about your research into seal behaviour. My research looks at individual differences in seal behaviour, to help further our understanding of why some seals are more successful than others. Our previous work has shown that seals have very individual ways of behaving and our current research is using heart rate monitoring to see how these behavioural differences are reflected physiologically. Our study has observed a colony of seals on the Isle of May, off the east coast of Scotland, during the breeding season over the last five years. We have focused our study on female seals whilst they are on land raising their pups.