FROM THE BBC WILDLIFE ARCHIVE: January 1988
The wars of the noses
A northern elephant seal photographed by Frans Lanting is the cover star of the March 1989 issue of BBC Wildlife. “The North American seal whose male is famous for being big, bellicose and endowed by evolution with a cauliflower snout has a scientific name – Mirounga angustirostris – that combines a native Australian word for an Antarctic animal with the Latin name for ‘narrow nose’,” says biologist Burney Le Boeuf. “Clearly, there has been a mistake”, he says. “It bears little resemblance to the animal’s looks or origins and is downright misleading.”
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