Hello, I am a student from Barcelona and I am back now from an internship in a rehabilitation and research centre in the Netherlands. I have been working on a behavioural research project studying seal with a strange behaviour towards humans. We considered the possiblity that the mother abandoned him before she should maybe due to low survival chances as he appears to have some kind of disability. It's all theories about it because we don't have much information on mothers abandoning their pups for such reasons. I have been looking for related articles but the copies were not available from my university (University of Barcelona). Some of the articles are: Mother-pup bonding in the harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) - do harbour seal mothers sometimes leave their pups alone?], Gaus, 2007 SEX-DIFFERENCES IN THE NURSING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MOTHERS AND PUPS IN THE ATLANTIC HARBOR SEAL, PHOCA-VITULINA-CONCOLOR, Rosen Das et al., 1992 FURTHER-STUDIES OF THE ROLE OF HARBOR SEAL (PHOCA-VITULINA) PUP VOCALIZATIONS IN PREVENTING SEPARATION OF MOTHER PUP PAIRS, Perry Ea, 1988 INFLUENCE OF STORMS AND MATERNAL SIZE ON MOTHER-PUP SEPARATIONS AND FOSTERING IN THE HARBOR SEAL, PHOCA-VITULINA, Boness, DJ et al, 1992. I would appreaciate if any of you send me some articles or information concerning common seal mother behaviour specially related to abandoning their pups. Thank you very much!