A 2,200-pound elephant seal named Neil has 1.4 million followers on TikTok, more than double the human population of Tasmania. He has earned them mostly by lying in roads.
Neil is five years old and weighs about 1,000 kilograms, roughly what a small car does. Twice a year he hauls himself out of the water at the beachside towns of southern Tasmania, where he was born. He spends most of each day flopped in one spot, sometimes in the middle of the street, and traffic stops around him.
He leaves damage behind. Traffic bollards have been bent, a fence has been smashed, and parked cars have taken hits. Online, many viewers cheer him as an anti-authoritarian hero.
Sophia Volzke, an elephant seal scientist at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, says the bad manners are ordinary for his age. Young males have to practise for the dominance fights adults wage over breeding rights, rearing up and crashing chests together. Neil is the only male elephant seal hauling out in Tasmania, so he has no young rival to spar with. He rehearses on Toyotas and local infrastructure instead.
A warning from officials
The attention has started to worry the state. At a news conference in Hobart, Kris Carlyon of Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment called Neil’s fame “a bit of a double-edged sword.”
Carlyon said some visitors had behaved “pretty silly,” carrying small babies up close to the seal “and simply trying to get that shot for Instagram.” Rangers, police officers and security guards now trail Neil around.
Authorities have asked fans not to post which town he is in. Their fear is that a bad encounter between the seal and an admirer could force rangers into a risky operation to move him. Carlyon pointed to Freya, a walrus in Norway who drew big crowds in 2023 and was euthanised after officials cited a growing threat to public safety. “There is a risk here of essentially loving Neil to death,” he said.
On Thursday Carlyon described Neil’s current patch of pavement, a puddle ringed by bollards that have been knocked flat. “He’s obviously decided this puddle surrounded by bollards, which are horizontal at the moment, is his spot,” he said. Neil has been filmed cuddled up to an orange traffic cone there, and he keeps returning even after rangers move him on.
Locals are split. Dale Creamer, who lives in the town Neil is currently trashing and has not been affected himself, called the seal “one of our biggest exports at the moment.” His verdict: “It’s Neil’s world and we’re just living in it.”
Neil may get much bigger. If he survives to adulthood he could reach 5 metres, about 16 feet, and weigh three times what he does now. Volzke says around 90 per cent of male elephant seals die before breeding age, which comes at about 10. She also sees something hopeful in his visits, since humans had largely wiped these animals out of the region. “We do need to find a way to coexist,” she said.
Sources
- Warning issued over viral 2,200lb seal after 'small babies posed for Insta snap'
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Sources
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