Neil the Seal is back on land and causing chaos again in Tasmania

Neil the Seal is back on Tasmanian beaches for his twelfth visit, and he's already picked a fight with a parked car.

The one tonne elephant seal has hauled himself onto the southern Tasmanian coast for his twice yearly stopover, the kind of visit that used to be a nice local surprise and is now a full blown event. This time round he's been caught flattening barriers put up specifically to keep him off the roads, and squaring up to cars that had the misfortune of being parked in his path.

Neil's TikTok following has climbed to 1.4 million, which is more than double Tasmania's entire human population. For an animal whose main personality trait is bellowing at inanimate objects, that's a genuinely wild following to have built.

Tasmania's department of natural resources has asked locals and visitors to keep their distance. To be fair to Neil, officials note he's "not inherently aggressive", he's just a one tonne wild predator having a bad day near your Corolla, which is a distinction that matters less than you'd think if you're the one standing next to him.

Here's the actual appeal though. Neil isn't cute in the curated influencer sense. He's a genuinely enormous, occasionally destructive marine animal who has decided the Tasmanian coast is his and everyone else is just visiting. There's something refreshing about internet fame that isn't built on a ring light or a script, just a seal being exactly himself while parked cars pay the price.

So if you're near the southern Tasmanian coast this week, give Neil his space, keep the car somewhere safer, and enjoy the show from a respectful distance. He's not doing this for the algorithm. He's just having the best time of his life, and honestly, good for him.