ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Everybody needs a shoulder to lean on now and then. A walrus calf at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, Alaska, is getting one 24 hours per day.

Trained staff members, working in pairs, are touching, massaging and cuddling a calf all day and all night as part of its recuperation. The calf, estimated to be about 6 weeks old, was found last month without its mother several miles outside Nome.

Walrus are highly social and spend two years with their mothers, said Jennifer Gibbins, marketing and communications director for the center.

"They need constant contact," Gibbins...