Baby seal takes surfing lesson, gives surfing lesson

There is no reason for a seal, even a goofy baby seal, to use a surfboard. Seals, in one of the best arguments for the comedic possibilities of evolution, are basically goofy dogs who live in the water and have slicked-up surfboards where their fuzzy dog-bellies would otherwise be. This is not a knock on seals, by any stretch. Their bellies serve them as well as any belly ever could.

But there is no good reason for this baby seal, which joined two British surfers for an hour of trans-species fellowship and periodic catching of waves, to attempt to use their surfboards. The seal didn’t need it and, due to the slick belly mentioned above, was pretty lousy at staying on the surfboard. Gawker’s Jay Hathaway provides some useful background on how it all went down.

I will update with any insights from seal experts that contradict this, but I am going to go ahead and guess that the seal was doing all this because it seemed like fun, and because the seal did not have anything more important scheduled for that hour. This is as good a reason to surf -- and maybe to do anything, actually -- as probably exists on Earth.

And so the question, finally, is not whether this is sports. This video clearly depicts sports, in both its literal (surfing) and essential (awesome) forms. The question, instead, is why sports are not more like this.