Hairy Nosed Otters - The Basics

Hairy-Nosed Otter

(Lutra sumatrana)

As promised, the posts this week are brief overviews of EACH of the otter species, focusing on recent information about each species and a vid or 2...

This is the first of the 3 otter species that are found *only* in Asia, enjoy exploring them!

Very little is known about the Hairy-Nosed Otter. It is endangered and rare. The nose is completely covered in hair, and the feet are webbed, with strong claws.The major threat to Hairy-nosed Otters is from humans: hunting, habitat competition, destruction, and pollution. Despite efforts to establish a captive breeding program, there have only been three of these otters held in captivity (all male).







Status: Endangered and Decreasing

 

 The Hairy-nosed otter is found in small areas scattered across the area shown in purple in the map to the left.











This otter is extremely reclusive and rare, so are the videos:

Link to Hairy-nosed otter video and conservation in Cambodia.

Brief vid of a young hairy-nosed otter entering the water!

If you want more in-depth reading a few research articles you could explore on these otters includes:


>   Food Habitats of the Hairy-nosed otter (Lutra sumatrana) and the Small clawed otter (Amblonyx cinerea) in Pru Toa Daeng Peat Swamp Rorest, Southern Thailand. Kanchanasakha, B.K. 2007. 

>   Keep wetlands wet: the myth of sustainable development of tropical peatlands–implications for policies and management ,S Evers, CM Yule, R Padfield, P O'reilly… - Global change …, 2016
>   Camera trapping for the study and conservation of tropical carnivores.R Sollmann, A Mohamed, MJ Kelly - The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 2013 -