This seal is surfing on a humpback whale like it’s NBD

By Neha Prakash

The hottest new form of seal transportation in Australia is humpback whales.

This enterprising seal was caught hitching a ride on the back of a humpback whale for easier access to some grub the whales were feasting on.

Australian photographer Robyn Malcolm captured the duo off the South Coast in New South Wales during a whale watching trip in Eden. Malcolm said at the time the picture was taken dolphins, seals, birds and whales were all feeding on bait fish.

“We’d seen some amazing whales coming out of the water, everything was happening so quickly,” Malcom told the Sydney Morning Herald. “And it was when I went back through the photos that I realized I had actually captured the seal on top of the whale.”

NSW National Parks and Wildlife whale expert Geoff Ross told SMH “the coupling was highly uncommon,” but he has previously heard of a similar incident in which a seal rode a humpback whale to to escape a killer whale.

Ross also confirmed the feeding frenzy Malcolm witnessed was a common way in which humpbacks eat, forcing fish into “very tight bait balls” adding “anything that makes it easier to catch fish, seals will be involved.”

Luckily for the Internet, 2015 has been chock-full of unlikely animal pairs traveling together.

In March, Martin Le-May captured a weasel riding on the back of a woodpecker in London (though it was later discovered that the weasel was attacking the woodpecker).

Seems like there’s enough material here to warrant a new Discovery Channel reality show.

IMAGES:
IMAGE: ROBYN MALCOLM/ DIIMEX.COM
Woodpecker
IMAGE: TWITTER/MARTIN LE-MAY
And in June, a Florida family caught a photo of a raccoon hitching a ride on an alligator.
raccoon-surfing-on-aligator
IMAGE: IMGUR, RICHARD JONES

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