Sealion's Bark Worse Than His Wife's

A WILDLIFE park is introducing single-sex sealion shows following complaints about noise levels when males and females work together.

Householders living close to Cricket St Thomas park near Chard, Somerset, England, have complained regularly about the loud barking of the performing sealions.

The tuneless repetitive honk is at its most annoying when male and female sealions are housed together.

When the park's owners applied for planning permission to build a new sealion arena, the residents drew up a list of grumbles and lodged objections with the planning authorities. "Noise from the sealion pool has made life a misery for us," said one resident.

South Somerset district council has responded by telling the park that planning permission is conditional on it monitoring and controlling the sealion gender mix. "We need to control the numbers and sexes of sealions because males make much more noise than the females," said Mike Williams, planning officer.

James Betts, sealion trainer, said it had been decided that only females would be used in the new arena. "Males are a lot noisier than the females, who like a quiet life and only bark if someone encroaches when they are sunbathing.

"The male's bark is a natural, instinctive reflex. In the wild, a male will have a harem of around 100 females and he barks because he is boasting that he is boss.

"They are not noisy all the time and single-sex groups make very little noise. The females like a life of sunbathing, swimming and eating so we will be sticking to female-only shows."