When you see otters floating on the water and rubbing their faces, don’t you think otters are the most chill and cutest animals on earth?🥰 Eurasian Otters, 𝐿𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑎 𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑎 (Linnaeus, 1758) spend most of their time resting (averagely 17 minutes per round), followed by hunting, grooming, and sleeping (13.7 minutes, 9.1minutes, 6.6 minutes per round respectively). What a relaxing life! 🦦
Eurasian Otters like to hunt in shallow water, ranging from 0-3 m deep, close to rocky intertidal areas where prey are abundant.🍽 Eurasian Otters are fish-lovers, when there is an abundant food supply, they prefer alive and slow-moving fishes to dead fishes. 🐟They can also adapt to their changing environment, in particular when the food supply is not stable; and then include other prey such as amphibians, crabs, small mammals, birds, and reptiles, but also even some fruits! 🍎
Besides hunting, otters invest a lot of time in grooming activities, as taking care of their fur is essential. Their hair density reaches 70,000 hairs /cm2 (human hair density is around 200 hair /cm2) which helps them to stay warm. 🌡 However, to maintain this insulating ability, they need to keep grooming to trap air within their fur.💆🏻 This explains why you may observe them grooming after diving into water. But if they dive into seawater🌊, then the time spent grooming will be doubled because seawater makes it more difficult for air retention within the fur (but gives you more opportunity to observe them).👀
Like many Carnivora, Eurasian Otters mark their territories with spraint (otter excretions). 💩 They leave spraint at the boundary and within their territory to avoid aggressive encounters with other individuals.💥 Male Eurasian Otters generally marked a larger area of territories than females, but sometimes a small proportion of territories of different individuals might overlap. Mother and young otters within their territory are more aggressive to intruders, especially towards males. 👺 They will keep renewing the marks and patrolling parallel to their territory in the waters along the shore. 🔁
Eurasian Otters are widely distributed throughout Asia, Europe, and parts of northern Africa.🌏 Some traits of their existence and photos captured by infra-red cameras confirmed the Eurasian Otters’ presence in Hong Kong as well, but only a few have ever witnessed them in person. 🧐 Eurasian Otters are sensitive to human disturbance, so it is for the best that they remain so mysterious to us.🤫 However, you can always come to visit the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum and observe this cute creature under our spotlight.🔦
Text: Kiu
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