Animal Facts That You Otter Know

In this episode, host, Rick Schwartz dives into the fascinating world of otters, focusing on the differences between North American river otters and sea otters. From their adaptations and behaviors, to the importance of conservation efforts for otters - Rick covers many of the otter facts you otter know!

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Go see sea otters at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Giant river otters at the LA Zoo

River otters at the Columbus Zoo

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Music: Positive Carefree Folk Pop

Artist: Burgberg

Used with Full Music Standard Lic.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

We should bring the mic in, don't we? That would help. That would help. Mike, check, mic, check. All right, here we are. Essentially, you're telling me it's an aquatic mink. That some species of this aquatic mink type of animal spend most of their life in the water, and others spend part of the time in the water, but both have bodies of water in their name. Yeah, I think we're talking about the otter. I'm Rick Schwartz, educator, public speaker, and all-around curious guy. Over the years, my curiosity and experiences, along with the many people I have worked with, revealed to me we all have a desire to feel connected to the natural world. You're listening to Animals, Nature, and You, a podcast that explores a connection between animals, nature, and humans. A podcast that celebrates learning more, following our curiosity, and reconnecting with the natural world. Welcome to another 10-minute Tuesday here on Animals Nature and You. I'm your host, Rick Schwartz, but you probably already knew that because you've been following along for a while. Which, before we get started here, a little bit of housekeeping. This has been pretty awesome, a lot of great feedback lately, and I appreciate it. If you aren't already a part of the little community here we're building, feel free to follow Animals Nature and You on Instagram. I'll put the links down below, or you can find out how to get a hold of me, zoologyrick.com. And definitely, definitely you need to follow or subscribe to this podcast, whether you're watching it on YouTube or listening on your podcast player, because we have so many cool people coming up in the next few episodes, and even further than that. So every Thursday is an episode where we interview someone doing awesome work, and then every Tuesday it's a 10-minute Tuesdays. And today's 10-minute Tuesday is, of course, something you ought to know about the otters. Now, there are a lot of different otter species, depending upon who you ask or talk to, what scientists you're trying to confirm information with, anywhere from 12 to 14 different species of otters. And this discrimination about exactly if it's a species or subspecies can be found through many parts of the animal kingdom and zoology. It's not uncommon, but nonetheless, today I'm mostly going to focus on the river otter, North American river otter, and the sea otter. Real quick on my side computer here, I have uh just some of the names of the common common names, excuse me, of the otters that we do have that we know about. Sea otter, one of the ones we're going to talk about. Interestingly enough, though, sea otter, broken into three subspecies, depending upon what part of the Pacific Ocean you're in. The giant otter, native to South America, Amazonia. Ah, goodness gracious, such an amazing. They're called the wolf of the river sometimes because of the way they behave. Very big otters, hence the name giant otter. North American river otter, Eurasian otter, African clawless otter, Asian small clawed otter, marine otter, south river, or excuse me, southern river otter, neotropical river otter, hairy-nosed otter. Haven't seen one of those. Kind of curious as to what that looks like. Spotted necked otter, smooth-coated otter, congo clawless otter, and that's pretty much the general list of what we have today. So I'm going to focus mostly on the difference between sea otters and river otters. And quick shout out to my buddy Junkle Jordan. This was inspired by the interview we just did last Thursday with him where he talked about being out for one of the nature walks and with the kids and spotting a river otter there in Washington State. So that'd be a North American river otter. Now, let's see. We could jump into river otters. Let's start there. River otters in North America can be found in many places other than rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, even uh sort of intertidal marsh areas, so marsh areas, excuse me, saltwater marsh. So it not necessarily a true freshwater. They could be sort of that intertidal space. Brackish water, it's called. So they're carnivores. They're going to eat anything from crayfish-like animals to small fish that they can catch, bugs, insects, worms, grubs, you name it. They'll even eat a little bit of vegetation and root vegetable, also vegetable root rhizomes, if you will, of some of the plants that live near the water. Now, they're called a river otter, but as we just discussed, they can be found in a wide variety of water areas. They only spend about one third of their life in the water. The rest of it, they are up on the banks of the river or the lake or whatever. They give birth in dens, they don't do it in the water, they raise their young in the den, they do teach them how to swim. But a lot of their life, the majority of their life, is not in the water. Now, if we jump over to the other otter, speaking of water, the sea otter. Like I said, there's three different subspecies, depending upon where you are. They're found in the Pacific Ocean, they're coastal areas of the Pacific Ocean. So from Mexico all the way up North America into Russia, and then as you come around the other side of the Pacific Ocean, you're looking at Japan and parts of Asia there too. Now, the sea otter spends almost all of its life in the water. Moms give birth to a single pup in the water, and the pup is born with a very dense coat of hair, teeth, eyes open, ready to rock and roll, does spend a good chunk of the first few weeks, months on mom's belly, but also is able to float on its own and spend time in the water learning how to swim pretty much right off the bat. Sea otters rely on things like sea urchins and other shellfish that they can go diving for. They're gonna live amongst and near kelp forest because that's where a lot of the sea life thrives that they like to consume and eat, and they spend their time floating together. Groups of them will come together and they create a raft. And if there's youngsters at that time of year, they'll try to put the youngsters in the center of the raft just to help keep them safe. So a little compare and contrast there, sea otters are much larger than river otters. And it's what's really fascinating to me also, sea otters hold the title right now that we know of on this planet, living today, as the mammal with the most dense fur. And it makes sense because when you look at the sea otter, they don't have blubber like whales or sea lions or walruses. They rely on a very high metabolism to burn a lot of energy to keep their body temperature up, and that very thick, dense coat is insulation. In fact, jumping back over to the North American river otter, I used to care for some when I was working at the zoo, and when you would see them swim, you could actually see bubbles of water coming off of them. Some people assume they're blowing bubbles, but if you really look, they're not coming out of the nostril. It's in the coat. The very thick dense coat over the sea sea lion almost said sea lion, sea otter and North American river otter, they have to keep it clean and groomed at all times. There's natural oils that they have. The multi-layered coat then traps air. Air acts as an insulator. As they dive and swim down, of course, some of that air gets forced out, and those are the bubbles you see coming up when if you're at a zoo or an aquarium where you can see them swimming, and you see some of those bubbles coming up. It's not a whole bunch, but it's some. So we were talking about the fur, though, and the fact that this the sea otter is known as being the animal in the world that we know of today with the most dense coat. So unfortunately, otters and sea river otters and sea otters were hunted quite a bit for their coats because it is so thick and so soft and dense, but it's an important part of their, of course, ability to live. So by the numbers, check this out. I looked it all up just to confirm. By the numbers, if you're like me, my co-producer who's currently laying over there, uh, is a cat. If you have a house cat at home, depending upon the breed of cat, they can have anywhere from 60,000 to 120,000 hairs per square inch. So that's you give you an idea, right? If you have a cat in your life or you've been around a cat, you know, okay, they got a nice soft coat. Now, dogs, the domestic dog, again, depending upon the breed, can be anywhere from, on average, 15 to 30,000 hairs per square inch. So not quite as thick as a domestic house cat. Again, breed specific could change. So I looked it up huskies, which are known to have a nice thick, dense coat. Theirs are on average 83,000 hairs per square inch. So quite a bit more in the in the density. So you think about the nice thick coat of that husky, right? So let's move on to the North American river otter. They only spend about a third of their life in the water, like we talked about. They spend a lot of time grooming and caring for their coat. And with good reason, it's going to take a lot of time when you have 373,000 hairs per square inch on average for the North American river otter, which then brings us to the creme de la creme, the big guy, the sea otters. The sea otter, depending upon the season, where they are and their growth cycle, averages anywhere from 800,000 hairs per square inch up to and around a million hairs per square inch per square inch. So again, it does play into the fact that this is a very important part of their body. Again, they're also well known for being voracious eaters. They're always eating, eating, eating. If they're not eating, they're sleeping. And if they're not sleeping, they're eating. Very much always on the go because of a high metabolism to keep their temperature up, to just float literally in that cold water they're in all the time, their entire lives. So pretty fascinating. And then let's talk a little bit about the conservation side of things. When we look at things like clean water, we talk about clean water quite a bit. We talk about conservation. Otters are a great example of how that can play out in the bigger system of the ecosystems. Of course, we as humans, we need clean water for ourselves, not only for drinking, but for agriculture and everything else. When we think about chemicals and regulations and rules that are in place to prevent the pollution of water, pollution from runoff of agriculture or runoff from runoff from industry, when we think about the rules that are in place for when we are dumping something down the storm drain, because although in our minds it's going down the street, down the gutter, into a storm drain, not a big deal. That storm drain ends up in a creek or ravine or canyon that eventually feeds a small river that goes to a big river and then eventually the ocean. It all adds up, of course. And we see these things kind of we mentioned in the Peregrine Falcon episode, how a lot of fish and crustaceans that are the filter feeders, the first consumers of these uh chemicals and pollutants, will then keep them in storm in their body, and animals like the otters will then consume them and can get sick from it. Otters are a great example of being able to understand how things are going in the ecosystem because they are the apex predator. They're the number one predator in their ecosystem. So if things aren't going well for them, the ecosystem in general is not doing well. We talk about habitat for proper mating and breeding and having pups, all the way to being able to hunt for food, have appropriate food, and then of course, how's that food source's health, which influences their health as well. So we think about all of this connectedness, how what we put down our drain or in our gutter, or what industries we support, what regulations we support for clean water, it all is connected. And the river otters being a great opportunity, or the sea otters being a great opportunity for us to see and understand how things are going in the environment around us. These are fascinating animals. And so if you're interested, I will put some links to some aquariums and zoos down below in the show notes of this episode because it's worth finding out more about. And if you do get the chance to go see them in your local zoo or your local aquarium, or even if you're fortunate enough to live somewhere where they live, I really want you to compare and contrast, look at the differences and similarities between the North American river otter and the sea otter. There's a lot of similarities, and there's a lot of differences. Either way, they're pretty awesome animals, and I find them fascinating. As I do with most animals, which I don't think I need to tell you that if you have been listening or part of my journey, you definitely know how that works. So with that, I'm gonna wrap it up. Again, like I said before, all the social media links and the website, all that's down below. And of course, if you haven't already, give it a follow, subscribe, like, whatever it might be to make sure you don't miss any of the upcoming episodes. We've got some great ones coming up. I appreciate you all so very much for being here. Have a good one, everybody.