Sea Otter
(Enhydra lutris)
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...
Sea
Otters spend their entire lives in the ocean, only leaving the water in
the case of extremely bad storms. They are also one of the known
tool-using mammals, using rocks to break shells open so they can consume
the shellfish inside. It is important that they are able to do this
well because they have to eat about 30% of their body weight every day!Status: Endangered and Decreasing
The Sea Otter range traditionally rimmed the outlying land/islands of the northern Pacific Ocean from Baja Mexico around Japan; currently they are restricted to the sporadic range shown in tan below.
Live WILD Sea Otter mom giving birth near Monterey Bay Aquarium
PBS's NATURE on Sea Otters
Another PBS documentary, thsi time from Jean-Michel Cousteau!
If you want more in-depth reading a few research articles you could explore on these otters includes:
> Prey choice and habitat use drive sea otter pathogen exposure in a resource-limited coastal system
CK Johnson, MT Tinker, JA Estes… - Proceedings of the …, 2009 - National Acad Sciences
> Southern sea otter as a sentinel of marine ecosystem health,DA Jessup, M Miller, J Ames, M Harris, C Kreuder… - EcoHealth, 2004 - Springer> Foraging patterns and prey selection in an increasing and expanding sea otter population,KL Laidre, RJ Jameson - Journal of Mammalogy, 2006 - BioOne
> Gene transcription in sea otters (Enhydra lutris); development of a diagnostic tool for sea otter and ecosystem health, L Bowen, AK Miles, M Murray… - Molecular ecology …, 2012
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