Neil weighs 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds), has 1.4 million TikTok followers, and has been lying in the road again.
The five-year-old elephant seal came ashore in southern Tasmania in June, after months feeding at sea. It was his 12th visit to the beachside towns near where he was born. Neil is the only male elephant seal to turn up in Tasmania in years, and his following is more than double the state’s human population.
He has left a mess. Traffic bollards are bent, a sign warning the public about seals is wrecked, and one fence failed against his attempt to climb it. He has picked fights with parked cars and gone through barriers put up to keep him off the roads. When he settles down, it is often in the middle of the street, and the town stops.
Sophia Volzke, an elephant seal scientist at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, said none of this is unusual. Young males have to practice for the dominance fights adults have, rearing up and slamming chests together over breeding rights. With no other young seals around, she said, Neil can only rehearse on Toyotas.
Please leave him alone
Officials are less amused. Kris Carlyon of Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment told a news conference in Hobart on Thursday that “Neil’s fame is a bit of a double-edged sword.”
“We have had some pretty silly behavior, instances with people carrying their small babies up close to him and simply trying to get that shot for Instagram,” he said. Officials have asked the public not to name the town Neil is in. A bad encounter with a fan could force rangers into a risky operation to move him.
Carlyon pointed to Freya, a walrus who drew big crowds in Norway in 2023 and was euthanized after officials cited a growing risk to people. “There is a risk here of essentially loving Neil to death,” he said.
A bigger problem ahead
Seals commonly return twice a year to the place they were born to rest, fast and shed fur. Female elephant seals have been seen ashore in Tasmania before, Volzke said, but they stop growing at the size Neil was at a year or two old, so they cause less trouble. The animals were largely driven out of the area by humans, and she said they may now be repopulating it. “We do need to find a way to coexist,” she said.
If he survives, Neil could reach 5 metres (16 feet) and three times his present weight. Volzke said about 90 percent of male elephant seals die before breeding age, around 10.
For now he is parked on a stretch of sidewalk, sometimes cuddling an orange traffic cone. Rangers have moved him away and he has come back. “He’s obviously decided this puddle surrounded by bollards, which are horizontal at the moment, is his spot,” Carlyon said.
Dale Creamer, who lives in the town and has not been put out personally, called Neil “one of our biggest exports at the moment.” He added: “It’s Neil’s world and we’re just living in it.”
