Celebrating World Otter Day

28^th May is World Otter Day! We are lucky to be home to 2 species of otter, the smooth-coated otter and the Asian short-clawed otter.

Smooth-coated Otters

These otters come from south and south-east Asia, living alongside rivers, rice paddies, swamps and lakes. These semi-aquatic mammals are as comfortable in water as they are on land. Smooth-coated otters live in family groups of the breeding pair and their current offspring in territories of around 7-12km sq.

Smooth-coated otters are highly territorial animals and will defend their dens and mark territories with scent glands. The family group will often hunt together, mainly feeding on fish making up to 98% of their diet.

As highly intelligent animals they require a lot of stimulation throughout the day, training is a great form of enrichment and is carried out daily at the park. The girls at Wingham Wildlife Park are always keen to get involved with their training and learn new behaviours. This training helps us to do our vital health checks and get a good head-to-toe look at them, as they move very fast through water and on land, so training to hold still on their target sticks is a great help.

As mentioned before, they are very territorial so we don’t go in the enclosure with them as they wouldn’t be very happy with us! Training offers a safe and stress-free way of moving the ladies around the enclosure.

Smooth-coated otters are classed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Redlist, their population is decreasing due to poaching for their short, velvety fur and they are also taken from the wild for the pet trade. Habitat destruction with increasing human populations across their range restricts their territories and pollution of water ways through pesticide use in agriculture leads to reduction of fish.

Hallie and pong (our smooth-coated otters) are part of the EAZA ex-situ breeding programme (EEP) which is a population management system covering over 500 species, enabling animal collections to work together to create stable and thriving populations in captivity.

Asian Short-clawed Otters

We are home to Jill and Storm who share an enclosure with their arboreal roommates, the binturongs. These otters are found in India, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Making homes in freshwater swamps and rivers.

Asian short-clawed otters are the smallest of the 13 species of otter averaging a weight of only 3-5kg! As their name suggests they have short claws and feet that are only partly webbed, giving them very dexterous paws which are vital for their preferred diet. They use these paws to dig out crustaceans from their shells, their diet mainly consists of crabs, snails, small fish and insects.

These too are classed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, facing similar threats of habitat loss and also hunting for their pelts and organs used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Jill and Storm are very inquisitive animals and are fun to train and enrich. Successful enrichment for these guys is anything that gets them using their paws to dig and investigate and puzzle feeders underwater are a favourite to bring out natural behaviours navigating and foraging underwater.

Otters are a joy to work with and are always up to something to keep us on our toes! They are very active throughout the day are great to watch at the park.