Walrus Sex

Jocko belly-flopped onto the artificial ice floe in the middle of his Vallejo pool and rocked back and forth - a blubbery portrait of walrus bliss. His counterparts in the wild should have it so good. Their Arctic ice floes are shrinking because of global warming, which means their numbers could decrease. That possibility makes the breeding behavior of Jocko and his two female friends, who live at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, fascinating to scientists - to the point that one researcher is creating an artificial vagina to entice the 2,200-pound Pacific walrus into sexual acts that can be measured and quantified. "This would be the first semen sample out of a walrus in the wild or captivity," said Holley Muraco, a specialist in marine mammal reproduction who has constructed similar body parts for horses, cows and pigs. She said the dramatic changes likely to occur in the Arctic would affect walrus breeding, an obscure activity about which little is known, partly because it happens underwater and partly because Pacific walruses live in a remote part of the world.