Card #027 · Mammals
Sea otter
Enhydra lutris
Super Rare EN · Endangered
Field notes
- Classification
- Order Carnivora · Family Mustelidae
- Range
- North Pacific coast
- Size
- 1.0–1.5 m (3.3–4.9 ft)
- Weight
- 14–45 kg (31–99 lb)
- Lifespan
- 15–20 yrs
- Diet
- Urchins, clams, crabs
Most Notable
It carries no blubber. Insulation is fur alone, about a million hairs to the square inch, the densest coat of any animal, and it has to be groomed constantly or the otter chills and dies.
Remove the otters and the sea urchins they feed on multiply, graze through the base of the kelp and leave bare rock where a forest stood. Return the otters and the kelp comes back. Few animals hold a whole habitat in place so plainly.
It is one of the few tool users among mammals. It will keep a favourite stone in the loose pouch of skin under a foreleg and hammer shells open against it while floating on its back.
Otters rest in single sex rafts of ten to a hundred animals, and sleeping otters are often seen holding paws or wound into a frond of kelp that keeps them from drifting.
Around a million were killed in the maritime fur trade, leaving perhaps one or two thousand alive. About 107,000 survive today, and every southern sea otter in California descends from a single group of roughly 50 found in 1938.
Range: North Pacific rim, Kamchatka and Alaska to California.