Sea Otter

Whenever I passed by the sea otter exhibition in the aquarium while volunteering, the sea otters always manage to get my attention by posing extraordinary cute postures, like rubbing its cheeks and such. But then I realized that the face rubbing is actually the otter's fur cleaning routine and it just happened to clean the fur on his face. How disappointing was that for me when I found out!

Speaking of fur, sea otters, or the Enhydra lutra, have no blubber, or fat, in their body to keep warm, so they got extremely dense fur to keep them from suffering hypothermia. Just an example how dense their fur is, their fur has already more hair fibers for us humans from head to toe just by the simple size of our thumb. So, keeping their fur clean and clear is very important for their survival. Unfortunately there is a recent oil spill in Gulf of Mexico, USA that is damaging the environment which cause lots of marine animals, including sea otters, and birds their lives due to the spill. Because the oil ruins the fur/feathers of animals that can be deadly for them. Birds can't fly away when necessary, marine mammals with fur can't keep warm and so on. Unless, there are people who are kind enough and lucky enough to see them and rescuing them and washing the oil out, then those animals can have a chance for survival.

Now, the fur isn't the only thing that's amazes me, it's also their HUGE appetite, one sea otter can eat up to 25% of their body weight, that's equivalent of humans eating 100 quarter pound hamburgers per day in order to survive. Sea otters mainly eat fish and crabs, but they are also an expert on eating clams by smashing small stones to crack open the shells to eat the delicacy inside. They put those small stones inside their pouches in their armpits when not using. Sort of like our small belt pouch.

Sea otters are the only otters that live their entire lives at sea, but they stay close to the coast, usually with and in giant kelp, which is the fastest growing seaweed in the world.

A female sea otter usually have one pup per litter and she floats on her back to let her pup feed.

When a pup is fully grown, it can reach up to 5 ft. (1.5m) long, including the tail and it can be found in Northeastern Pacific Ocean, inshore from Aleutian Islands to California.