Otters!

Everyone knows about those cute, playful otters that are always sliding down a riverbank or mudbank. Being playful and loving fun is a major part of otters' personalities. They are mostly marine mammals, especially sea otters, but sea otters and river otters are very similar, so I would probably speak for both. One of the only differences is that the sea otter spends much more of its life in the water than the river otter. Some river otters are also bigger than sea otters, as well as being a little sleeker, but other than this, they are pretty much the same. They are the same basic cute little marine mammal.

     Otters are the smallest marine mammals in North America, being about 4 feet long and weighing around 55 pounds. Sea otters eat a lot of things. Their diet includes clams, crabs, starfish, abalone, and 40 other marine mammals. When a sea otter finds a clam or crab, they come up to the surface and flip over on their backs, using their stomach as a table. Sometimes, they'll bring a rock up to the surface as well, using that as a tool to break open the shell of their prey, so they can get to the soft and meaty exterior. To eat their prey, otters have very strong canine teeth to tear meat apart and to tear meat off of their prey. They also have flat molars, like us, for crushing their prey. Otters will dive as deep as 120 feet for their food. These dives usually last one minute or so, but the longest recorded dive has been four minutes. This is actually not surprising, considering that their lung size is 2.5 times the lung size of land mammals that are about the same size. Something amazing is that otters have to eat 25% of their body weight EACH DAY. That means that if you were a sea otter and you weighed 100 pounds, you would have to eat 25 pounds of food each day to stay alive.

       Some sea otters live in freezing temperatures-- from 30 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Since otters don't have blubber like the Cetacea family (whales and dolphins), they have extremely thick fur. You may have around 20,000 hairs on your whole head, right? Well, sea otters have 600,000 to 1,000,000 hairs PER SQUARE INCH. That's a lot of fur. Especially when you multiply that times how many inches are on a whole sea otter... So, it's no surprise that the sea otter has the thickest fur of any animal. Sea otters also have to keep each individual hair clean. If they don't, it might get matted and otters could die from hypothermia.

         There are a lot of threats to the sea otters today. Oil spills are one of the major threats, because the oil gets into the fur and coats it, so that it destroys the "blanket" of air that is trapped by the hairs. This blanket of air keeps the otters warm, so if it were to be destroyed, the otter could die from hypothermia. Fishing nets are also a threat to otters, as well as dolphins and whales. The nets trap the otter so that it can't get to the surface for air, and they drown. Any water pollution could be a potential threat to the otter species as well as other animals of the sea.

          Otters, as marine mammals, have excellently developed senses. Like sea lions, they have external ears. They also have very good hearing, whether in the water or outside the water. They have very good sight, and their sense of touch is excellent. The whiskers on sea otters' faces are used to sense vibrations in the water. When otters swim, they usually float on their backsides and use their tail to steer and propell themselves forward. When they get alarmed, however, they flip over on their backs and disappear into the water. Sleeping otters float on their backs and wrap themselves in kelp, or seaweed, to keep themselves from floating away. They also fold their front paws over their chest. One of the funniest things is that sometimes the sleeping otter also has all four feet "wired" up in the air. Also, sometimes, if it's during the daytime, they will put their paws over their eyes.