Rick Beldegreen
RESEARCH

A WONDERFUL WALRUS RUCKUS

A tangle of tusks and tummies

National Geographic Your Shot photographer Rick Beldegreen lay on his belly and pointed his camera straight down to get this shot of a walrus herd on the Aleutian Peninsula on the Bering Sea in Alaska.

Both males and females have large tusks that are used for defense, cutting through ice and getting out of the water. The tusks can be more than three feet long in males and about two and a half feet long in females. Odobenus rosmarus, the walruses' scientific name, is Latin for "tooth-walking sea-horse!