Grey seal twins on desert island?

Translated from Ecomare museum on Texel island in the Netherlands; about grey seals:

Two pups and one mother – 26-12-2015

On the uninhabited Wadden sea island Richel researchers from IMARES in early December saw a seal mother with two pups. This is unusual, because seals basically actually always get just one baby. Twins are very rare in the seal family. The researchers therefore believe that they are possibly not real twins, but one of the two pups’ biological mother was lost or the pup had already been weaned. The pup then perhaps went looking for another female to drink milk. Twins or not, it is a beautiful sight!

Aggressive

Seal mothers are pretty tough to other females and their pups. Also to young ‘strange’ seals they can thereby respond quite aggressively. A new pup is not accepted simply. The researchers found that the female several times did biting movements to one of the two pups, but after a while she stopped that. Eventually the two young seals were both able to drink with her.

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