Spotted-Necked Otters - The Basics

  Spotted-Necked Otter 

(Hydrictis maculicollis)

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 last of the 3 species of fully African otters, enjoy! :)  

Due to genetics work done on otters, this otter has been put in to a new genus, Hydrictis! (more about that in another post!)
Spotted-necked Otters are fairly small, weighing 10 to 20 lbs.They live alone or in small family groups, but often form social and hunting groups of five to twenty members. They spend more time in the water than other freshwater species, almost never leaving the water or water's edge. Resting sites, holts, latrines, and breeding areas are all right next to the water; they're not very agile on land, but, like other otters, the Spotted-necked Otter tends to turn everything it does into a game!

Status: Near Threatened and Decreasing

 The Spotted-Necked Otter is native to large parts of southern Africa, as shown in green in the map to the left.



The Spotted-Necked Otter's habitat in places overlaps the habitat of the Cape (african) Clawless Otter and the Congo Clawless Otter (shown in the 2 previous blogs!).








 Videos of Spotted-necked otters in the wild are few and far between, so... until I can track some good ones down here is video from the San Diego Zoo!

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


>   Differentiation of two South African otter species (Aonyx capensis and Lutra maculicollis) from spraint based on partial CytB primer sets,MT Madisha, et al, 2015
>  Conflict between spotted-necked otters and fishermen in Hlan River, Benin,AH Akpona et al, 2015
>  Capacity building to conserve African otters,H Akpona et al, 2016