Culture

You Deserve To Watch 16 Of The Best Seal Videos On The Internet

Treat yourself.

by Joseph Earp  20 August 2020
Seal best videos

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We live in troubled, unsettled times to which there is no immediate antidote. But even if we can’t fix our problems overnight, we can certainly watch videos of seals while we try.

Ever since the start of the trashfire that has been 2020, I have used such videos as my own personal balm. Whenever some new horror in the news gets me down, I just flip open my phone, gaze temporarily at a video of some dog of the sea, and briefly luxuriate in the oasis of calm provided.

Now, dear reader, I extend the gift of seal videos to you. Use these 16 all-time great videos of seals wisely, when you most need a pick-me-up to get you through another tough day.

1. Flipper Mechanic

One of the top five attributes of seals, along with their excellent sense of humour, is their curiosity. Seals wanna know what you’re doing and why, and they’re not afraid to get real close to find out, resulting in this perfect video of a young pup fascinated by flippers:

2. Snoozing Honker

The best Twitter account, bar none, is @aguhiyori, the official social media channel for a Japanese seal sanctuary. Scrolling the entire Aguhiyori timeline will bring you calm, but if you want to mainline that good feeling, just go straight to this video of a sleeping sea pig.

3. Farting Menace

This YouTube video is titled “seal farts after looking directly at me”, and it tells you everything you need to know.

4. Accidental Hill Roll

Seals are not exactly known for their grace and poise. But what they lack in self-possession, they more than make up for in sheer un-fuckwithability. Nothing disrupts or upsets a seal — even falling down a rather steep hill.

5. Cuddly Puddle

One of my favourite things about seals is their sheer malleability — they are more liquid than solid, capable of forming their body into whatever bizarre shape that they want. Case in point? This clip of a seal forming a perfect sphere.

6. Lost Pup Breaks Hearts

I love Dodo videos. The social media behemoth makes short documentaries about all kinds of lost animals, from dogs to hippos, and pretty much every one of them makes me cry. This eight-minute short film, in which a lost seal pup finally finds a home, is absolutely guaranteed to make you shed a few happy tears.

7. Just Guys Being Dudes

One more quick Dodo clip. This one, which is just under two-minutes long, features a whole bevy of seals deciding to joyfully antagonise the same diver, coming up to him and sniffing at his gear like a group of excited schoolchildren.

8. Kayaking Legend

Seals often have interesting interactions with kayakers, paddling up to the vessels to try and work out quite what is going on. But few kayak videos are as rewarding as this one, in which a seal decides to go for a ride.

9. Boop

This is actually another video taken from the Aguhiyori seal sanctuary — the seals there have all been perfectly trained how to respond to a good old-fashioned boop, resulting in clips as wonderful as this.

10. Junior

Been hanging out this whole list to see a seal do stereotypical seal things? Then here’s the video for you. In this short clip, a seal named Junior climbs onto a whale-watching boat and demonstrates his most impressive tricks, starting, of course, with an old-fashioned high five.

11. Baby Seal Gets Rescued

The Ocean Conservation Nambia YouTube account is both cute and galling — in the short videos, conservationists capture, rescue and then release animals that have been tied up in fishing wire. In this heartwarming clip, one of the saved seals decides to show a lot of appreciation for his human captors, hanging around for a bit to see what is up.

12. Hello From An Elephant Seal

Elephant seals tend to get slightly less respect than their cuter counterparts, mostly on account of their big old schnozzes, which aren’t exactly photogenic. But don’t let those beauty standards fool you. These behemoths are just as much fun as their fellow creatures, as this clip of one bellowing hello proves.

13. Those Eyes!

The most dog-like thing about a seal, I reckon, is their big black eyes. This video, in which a young pup begs a diver to play, shows those eyes off more than any other, as the critter gazes into the camera, lovingly.

14. What’s Better Than A Baby Seal?

Perhaps nothing gives me more joy than this video, a tiny little baby seal checking out the world with clear eyes and an open heart.

15. That Don’t Impress Me Much

Turns out cats are so aloof that they’ll even ignore the attention of an acrobatic seal. Just goes to show: you really can’t impress everyone.

16. Crybaby Learns to Swim

I have elsewhere called this one of my favourite videos on the internet. I stand by that. If none of these other videos has warmed your heart, then perhaps this one will, a short video in which a lazy seal tries to convince himself to swim in some very cold water.

Joseph Earp is a seal enthusiast and staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp.