After a month or so, elephant seal pups are weaned from their mothers. Fattened on their mothers' milk, these pups cluster together, for companionship and perhaps warmth, on a foggy morning along the central coast of California.

Pups generally remain on the beach until the potentially dangerous adult males have returned the sea. (Note the quite small seal in the middle of the pups - it appears to have a serious head wound.) These pups, on a secluded beach away from some of the more popular viewing areas, seem to share a curiosity about their human visitors.